Microsoft Joins Eclipse Jakarta EE and MicroProfile Working Groups

Microsoft boosted its support for Java developers yet again this week by expanding its participation in the Eclipse Foundation to include memberships in two working groups: the Jakarta EE Working Group, which focuses on the overall evolution of enterprise Java, and the MicroProfile Working Group, which focuses on optimizing enterprise Java for a microservices architecture.

"Our goal is to help advance these technologies to deliver better outcomes for our Java customers and the broader community," said Julia Liuson, president of Microsoft's Developer Division, in a blog post. "We’re committed to the health and well-being of the vibrant Java ecosystem, including Spring (Spring utilizes several key Jakarta EE technologies)."

Joining these working groups complements the company's participation in the Java Community Process (JCP) "to help advance Java SE," Liuson said, adding, "We believe our experience with running Java workloads in the cloud will be valuable to the working groups, and we look forward to building a strong future for Java together with our customers, partners, and the community."

Eclipse working groups provide the governance structure for Eclipse projects, making it possible for organizations—even competitors—to collaborate on new technology development. The working groups provide a set of basic services, including intellectual property management and licensing, development processes, IT infrastructure, and ecosystem development.

Microsoft has been a member of the Eclipse Foundation since 2016, when it joined as a Solutions Member. The company became a Strategic Member in 2021. Among other privileges, Strategic Members have a seat on the foundation's board of directors, its architecture council, and expanded board voting rights on key aspects of the Eclipse ecosystem, including licensing, governing policy development, and amendments to membership agreements and bylaws.

"Microsoft has warmly embraced all things Java across its product and service portfolio, particularly Azure," said the foundation's executive director, Mike Milinkovich, in a statement. "Its enterprise customers can be confident that they will be actively participating in the further evolution of the Jakarta EE specifications, which are defining enterprise Java for today's cloud-native world."

Microsoft has been investing in its support for Java and related technologies for a number of years, including Jakarta EE, MicroProfile, and Spring technologies on Azure in collaboration with its strategic partners. With Red Hat, for example, the company built a managed service for JBoss EAP on the Azure App Service, Liuson noted. Redmond is also collaborating with Red Hat to enable solutions for JBoss EAP on Virtual Machines (VMs) and Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO). Working with VMware, Microsoft jointly develops and supports Azure Spring Apps, a fully managed service for Spring Boot applications. And with Oracle and IBM, the company has been building solutions for customers to run WebLogic and WebSphere Liberty/Open Liberty on VMs, Azure Kubernetes Service, and ARO (WebSphere).

"It is great to see Microsoft officially join both MicroProfile and Jakarta EE, as they'd been informally involved in these efforts for a long time," said Mark Little, vice president of the Software Engineering group at Red Hat, in a statement. "I hope to see Microsoft's participation bring experience from their many users and partners who have developed and deployed enterprise Java applications on Azure for several years."

The Eclipse Foundation announced the released the first Jakarta EE specification in August 2019, almost exactly two years after Oracle declared its intention to transfer the responsibility for enterprise Java to that open-source standards organization.

Posted by John K. Waters on July 14, 2022