Lightbend Joins Eclipse Foundation to Support Jakarta EE Modernization for Cloud-Native Java

SAN FRANCISCO, April 10, 2018 -- Lightbend, provider of the leading Reactive application development platform for building distributed systems, and the company behind Scala, Akka, Lagom, and Play Framework, today announced it has joined Eclipse Foundation. In September 2017, Oracle transferred governance of Java EE to Eclipse Foundation, “to make the process of evolving [the] standards more agile, flexible and open.”¹ Lightbend joins Eclipse Foundation as a new member to support its mission² to bring an Open Source governance model to the Java EE platform (now named “Jakarta EE³”).

With more than 10 million worldwide Java developers and a massive installed base on Java Virtual Machine (JVM) infrastructure--Java is the lingua franca of enterprise systems that have the most rigorous requirements for uptime and scale. Under the Java Community Process (JCP), numerous industry proponents of Java EE observed a stagnation in enterprise features innovation and progress. Lightbend supports Eclipse Foundation’s mission to reinvigorate Jakarta EE through lower barriers to community participation, a more Open Source model -- and particularly to support enterprises that are heavily invested in Java infrastructure and require a more cloud-native orientation of the platform underlying their applications.

“Eclipse Foundation is making the right moves to accelerate cloud-native Java innovation in Jakarta EE,” said Mark Brewer, CEO at Lightbend. “Almost every Fortune 500 company has millions of dollars in existing Java infrastructure and talent. For most, Java EE is the backbone of the business, and the new mandate is modernizing to support all of the economic opportunities and deployment flexibility that the cloud provides. As enterprises view their legacy on-prem systems, they want to know that there is a plan, a path forward to the cloud. Lightbend sees the success that MicroProfile has achieved through Eclipse Foundation’s governance model, and we are both reassured to see that Jakarta EE will benefit from the same approach, and excited to bring Lightbend’s own expertise with Reactive, streaming data and microservices patterns to support that community journey.”

Lightbend will work with the Eclipse Foundation and the broader Jakarta EE community in bringing Reactive principles to the platform. Initial areas of focus will include adding new Reactive and stream-based messaging APIs and Servlet 3.1 support for Reactive Streams. This will bring modern stream-native and event-driven programming models to Jakarta EE. These features support persistence models that scale well across distributed systems, such as event sourcing and Command Query and Responsibility Segregation (CQRS). Lightbend is a founding contributor to the Reactive Streams standard, and that experience in streaming and Reactive systems at scale presents a big opportunity for Jakarta EE to be the standard for Reactive enterprise systems.

“There are also proposals in front of the JDK itself,” said Jonas Bonér⁴, author of the Reactive Manifesto, creator of Akka, and CTO at Lightbend. “For example, a Reactive Streams-based alternative to java.util.stream (the Reactive Streams APIs are already available in the JDK as the java.util.concurrent.Flow API). Having a native implementation of the Reactive Streams specification in the JDK itself would make it easier to build Reactive and stream-based JDK components on top, for example async HTTP, async JDBC, and support for streaming in WebSockets.”

“We also have proposals — currently discussed in the MicroProfile group — that are trying to push Java more into the event-driven space,” said Bonér. “The JMS and Message Driven Beans specs are very outdated and there’s a need for a new messaging standard that more fully understands this new world of event-driven systems, real-time data, and data-in-motion. More details about these proposals can be found in this article.”

Innovative enterprises that include LinkedIn, Samsung, Verizon, Walmart and William Hill (see case studies) have adopted the Lightbend Reactive Platform to build low latency, fast data applications based on modern microservice architectures. Lightbend's platform and professional services have become a popular option for enterprises that leverage the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and JVM-languages like Java and Scala -- seeking the performance and business benefits of application resiliency and extreme scale defined by the Reactive Manifesto.

About Lightbend
Lightbend (Twitter: @Lightbend) provides the leading Reactive application development platform for building distributed applications. Using microservices and fast data on a message-driven runtime, enterprise applications scale effortlessly on cloud computing architectures. Many of the most admired brands around the globe are transforming their businesses with our platform, engaging billions of users every day through software that is changing the world.

About Eclipse Foundation
Eclipse is a community for individuals and organizations who wish to collaborate on open source software. There are over 300 open source projects in the Eclipse community, ranging from tools for software developers, geo-spatial technology, systems engineering and embedded development tools, frameworks for IoT solutions, tools for scientific research, and much more. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation that is the steward of the Eclipse community. More information is available at eclipse.org.

Editorial Contact
Lonn Johnston
+1 650.219.7764
[email protected]

¹ “Opening Up Java EE -- An Update,” Oracle Blog, September 12, 2017

² “Introducing the EE.next Working Group,” Life at Eclipse, February 5, 2018

³ “And the Name Is…,” Life at Eclipse, February 26, 2018

⁴ “How Java EE Can Get Its Groove Back,” DZone, March 21, 2018