After a lot interesting discussions at the Eclipse Summit we recognized that we have more to offer to the Eclipse community than just e-commerce solutions. We are currently discussing a change to our project scope. Please read on for our new proposed scope.

The CloudFree Server Platform will develop infrastructure, components, and tools that will support development, provisioning and operation of scalable server solutions. Development of a fully-fledged JavaEE application server is out-of-scope of this project. Instead, we will focus on the runtime infrastructure and core components around Equinox which are essential for building server solutions or server application products. Additionally, exemplary services will be provided which demonstrate the extensibility and flexibility of the CloudFree Server Application Platform. Where possible, existing Eclipse technologies will be re-used and integrated.

The CloudFree Server Platform Project includes the following components and exemplary services:

• Contextual Runtime - This is a central model for establishing a “context” for building multi-tenant applications offered as software as a service (SaaS). Typically, certain aspects in a SaaS system are not static. For example, some extensions contributed to an extension point should be available to some tenants but not to others. The contextual runtime will allow such filtering based on the current execution context.
• Clustering & Monitoring Service - With scalability and operational simplicity in mind, the clustering service will enable multiple installations to form an application cluster and provide operators with an intuitive management interface based on the admin service. Monitoring will be built into the platform as an essential concept and will also provide integration and extension points.
• Admin Service - A central administration interface provided by the platform. The service will provide extension points to allow extenders to integrate nicely with the platform.
• Exemplary Web Application - An exemplary web application will be created which demonstrates programming, scalability and operational concepts provided by the platform.

Although the project’s main focus is building a server platform based on Equinox running standalone, it is also anticipated that the platform can run embedded in an existing JavaEE application container and integrated with container specific APIs and tools to implement the features provided by the platform. However, the development of such vendor-specific integrations is out of the project’s scope. The CloudFree platform will provide frameworks and extension points to allow third parties building such integrations.

Please join us for discussing the new scope on our mailing list or in the newsgroup. One item that we are also discussing is the project name. Should we change it? We’ve opened a bug to discuss that. What do you think?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.