News

Hazelcast Joins Eclipse Foundation

• By John K. Waters
• December 6, 2017

In-memory data grid (IMDG) specialist Hazelcast Inc. today announced that it has joined the Eclipse Foundation to bring its "extensive Java-driven community experience to a host of open source projects." The company will focus primarily on JCache, Eclipse MicroProfile and the Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J) Project, the company said.

Hazelcast is especially interested in collaborating with Foundation members to promote JCache, the Java standard API for caching on the Java platform, the company said in a statement.

JCache was developed in the Java Community Process (JCP) via JSR-107, the longest running specification request in the history of Java. The spec defines an API and semantics for temporary, in-memory caching of Java objects, including object creation, shared access, spooling, invalidation and consistency across JVMs. "These operations help scale out applications and manage their high-speed access to frequently used data," the company explained.

JCache provides what Hazelcast CTO Greg Luck has described as "a well thought out, standardized API and programming contract for Java caching." And Luck ought to know: he co-authored the JCache spec, and his company was just elected to a seat on the JCP Executive Committee.

Both the MicroProfile and the Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) were recently accepted as Eclipse projects. MicroProfile, an independent initiative to create a baseline platform definition that optimizes enterprise Java for microservices architecture, was accepted by the foundation last December. The Foundation accepted Java EE to become the Eclipse EE4J Project in September.

Prior to becoming a Solution Member of the Eclipse Foundation, Hazelcast was already an active member of the Eclipse MicroProfile project, along with IBM, Red Hat, Tomitribe, Payara, the London Java Community (LJC), SouJava, Hazelcast, Fujitsu, SmartBear and Oracle.

"Given our work on Eclipse MicroProfile and the fact that Oracle has moved stewardship of Java EE technologies to the Foundation, we felt it was the right time to become even more involved," Luck said in a statement. "As a company we are fully committed to driving adoption of open standards, along with ensuring Java remains the premier enterprise software platform."

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hazelcast has roots planted deeply in the Java language and platform (its IMDG is written in Java), but the company has spread its support over the years, thanks in part to the efforts of its open source community, to include several clients and programming languages.

"Hazelcast has demonstrated a strong commitment to open source and an open specification process for enterprise Java," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. "Its participation in the Eclipse MicroProfile and EE4J communities will help ensure the overall success of these open source projects."