Easy to use, affordable, and over 300% faster, Open Source Java Enterprise Edition of popular Apache Tomcat application server ideally suited for Cloud environments

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced Apache TomEE v1.0. Apache TomEE is the Java Enterprise Edition 6 Web Profile-Certified edition of Apache Tomcat, the world’s most popular Java application server software, with more than 70% market penetration within the enterprise.

A sub-project of Apache OpenEJB, TomEE adds Java EE features to the latest version of Apache Tomcat (v7.0.27; released 5 April 2012) in the simplest way possible. TomEE runs without any additional memory requirements, is compatible with most Tomcat-aware/tested tools and applications.

"Apache TomEE makes developing Java EE solutions easy and simple," said David Blevins, Vice President of Apache OpenEJB. "TomEE is the closest and shortest jump for anyone with a Tomcat stack using any number of Java EE technologies to finally move to a Java EE 6 Web Profile certified platform that offers great freedom in the Cloud."

According to the latest Gartner Group report on Cloud innovation in application platforms [1], "Through 2017, at least 70% of new Java EE applications will be deployed on an open-source Java application server…OSS application servers primarily (but not exclusively) from Apache…will continue to dominate small-scale Java EE deployments."

Coupling ongoing industry demand for Apache Tomcat-based solutions with the recent spike in Java EE use –particularly in Cloud environments– standards-based solutions play an increasingly important role in addressing concerns with vendor lock-in. Apache TomEE provides a new choice for the millions of developers [2] wanting a standards-based solution for the Cloud while retaining Tomcat, and is especially performant in very tiny machines.

Apache TomEE combines several Java enterprise projects including Apache OpenEJB, Apache OpenWebBeans, Apache OpenJPA, Apache MyFaces, among others, and obtained its Java EE 6 Web Profile certification on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in October 2011. 

"For I Like Places, Enterprise Java was a big bet, mainly because the servers alone can kill a startup due to the costs they incur. Added to this is the learning curve involved with Java EE," said Ravindranath Akila, Founder of Adimpression. "The irony is that none of these mattered because of Apache TomEE: it is so lightweight, lightning fast, and loves the Cloud. We’re absolute fans!"

The Project's commitment to enhancing production quality includes low memory footprint and extensive performance improvements on large applications, yielding 100-300+% faster startup times over earlier versions:

- Railo 3.3 Custom (44mb WAR): 21.3% of beta2 startup time (369% faster)

- Lift/Scala sample app (23mb WAR): 43.8% of beta2 startup time (128% faster)

- Confluence 3.5.5 (149mb unpacked): 37.6% of beta2 startup time (166% faster)

"We have been working closely with Apache TomEE over the last few months in preparation of becoming the first TomEE hosting provider on our 100% Java cloud platform. We are pleased to expand our offering to include TomEE, whose low overhead offers a more affordable option than other JavaEE app servers," said Neale Rudd, Director of Metawerx. "So far we've seen performance improvements over 3x in application startup times and a series of code changes that confirm their pledge to being a lean, 100% Java EE 6 certified container while coping with the extra burden of a ‘do-no-harm’ promise in regards to running standard Tomcat apps. Congratulations on v1.0!"

"The strength of TomEE is the sum of its community members --the value in feedback provided by an ISP that supports many applications is immeasurable. We appreciate the excellent testing feedback received from Metawerx and encourage other Apache Tomcat hosting facilities to work with us as they add TomEE to their lineup," added Blevins. "TomEE is a natural fit for Tomcat-focused ISPs as they now have a Java EE option that naturally fits with their existing infrastructure." The Project invites any ISPs seeking to expand their services by including TomEE to email the developer list at <dev@openejb.apache.org> for more information.

Apache TomEE software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project’s day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. Apache TomEE source code, documentation, mailing lists, and related resources are available at http://openejb.apache.org/.

Forest Hill, MD –24 April 2012– The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced Apache Cassandra v1.1. The highly-scalable, distributed database quickly and reliably handles massive data sets across community machines, large server clusters, and data centers without compromising performance –whether running in the Cloud or partially on-premise in a hybrid data store.

"Apache Cassandra is the leading scalable NoSQL database in terms of production installations --the 1.0 release was a huge milestone," said Jonathan Ellis, Vice President of Apache Cassandra. "v1.1 improves on that foundation with many features and enhancements that developers and administrators have been asking for."

Apache Cassandra is rapidly garnering accolades as a best of breed "NoSQL" solution for its ease of use, powerful data model, enterprise-grade reliability, tunable performance, and incremental scalability with no single point of failure. Super-efficient, Cassandra accommodates high query volumes at exceptional speed (sub-millisecond writes) with low latency, and handles petabytes of data across formats and applications in real time.

Apache Cassandra v1.1 features improved caching, revised query language (CQL –Cassandra Query Language– a subset of SQL), storage control, schema/structure, Hadoop integration/output, data directory control, and scalability.

Successfully handling thousands of requests per second, Apache Cassandra is deployed at Adobe, Appscale, Appssavvy, Backupify, Cisco, Clearspring, Cloudtalk, Constant Contact, Digg, Digital River, Formspring, IBM, Mahalo.com, Morningstar, Netflix, Openwave, OpenX, Palantir, PBS, Plaxo, Rackspace, Reddit, RockYou, Shazam, SimpleGeo, Spotify, Twitter, Urban Airship, US Government, Walmart Labs, Yakaz, and more.

The largest Cassandra production cluster to date exceeds 300 terabytes of data over 400 machines.

Jeffrey Abbruzzi, Director of eCommerce Engineering and Operations at Williams-Sonoma, added, "In Apache Cassandra, the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. eCommerce team has found a platform that addresses fundamental challenges we faced in modernizing the foundation of our gift registry systems: the need for top-flight performance, fast and reliable replication among geographically distributed nodes, and lack of any single point of failure. We're excited about the release and how it can help us continue to evolve the world-class websites of our Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, PBTeen, Pottery Barn Kids, and West Elm brands."

"We applaud the continued hard work of all of the contributors to the Apache Cassandra project, who continue to make Cassandra the most scalable, easy-to-use, high-performance NoSQL solution available," said Robin Schumacher, VP of Products for DataStax. "We look forward to including Cassandra v1.1, with all the improvements it brings, into the next version of our DataStax Community Edition, as well as upcoming versions of our DataStax Enterprise Edition."

Cassandra entered the Apache Incubator in 2009, and graduated as an Apache Top-Level Project (TLP) in February 2010. Apache Cassandra v1.0 was released in October 2011.

Apache Cassandra software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a Project Management Committee (PMC) that guides the Project's day-to-day operations, community development, and product releases. Apache Cassandra source code, downloads, documentation, mailing lists, and related resources are available at http://cassandra.apache.org/.

Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees nearly one hundred fifty leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 350 individual Members and 3,000 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(3)(c) not-for-profit charity, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including AMD, Basis Technology, Citrix, Cloudera, Facebook, GoDaddy, Google, IBM, HP, Hortonworks, Huawei, Matt Mullenweg, Microsoft, PSW Group, SpringSource, and Yahoo!. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/.

"Apache", "Apache Cassandra", and "ApacheCon" are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) welcomes Citrix to the roster of sponsors at the Platinum level.

"We are pleased to welcome Citrix to our individual and corporate sponsors whose generosity helps advance the day-to-day operations of The Apache Software Foundation," said ASF Chairman Doug Cutting. "This support helps us successfully shepherd more than 100 top-level projects, incubate dozens of open source innovations, broaden community outreach, and enhance the lives of countless users and developers The Apache Way."

Citrix joins the following Sponsors: Platinum level --Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!; Gold level --AMD, Hortonworks, HP, and IBM; Silver level --Basis Technology, Cloudera, Matt Mullenweg, PSW GROUP, and SpringSource; Bronze level --AirPlus International, BlueNog, Digital Primates, FuseSource, Intuit, Joost, Liip AG SA Ltd, Lucid Imagination, Talend, Two Sigma Investments, and WANdisco.

For more information on becoming a Sponsor of the ASF, please see http://apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html

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Forest Hill, MD --The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced that Apache Sqoop has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the Project’s community and products have been well-governed under the ASF's meritocratic process and principles.

Designed to efficiently transfer bulk data between Apache Hadoop and structured datastores such as relational databases, Apache Sqoop allows the import of data from external datastores and enterprise data warehouses into Hadoop Distributed File System or related systems like Apache Hive and HBase.

"The Sqoop Project has demonstrated its maturity by graduating from the Apache Incubator," explained Arvind Prabhakar, Vice President of Apache Sqoop. "With jobs transferring data on the order of billions of rows, Sqoop is proving its value as a critical component of production environments."

Building on the Hadoop infrastructure, Sqoop parallelizes data transfer for fast performance and best utilization of system and network resources. In addition, Sqoop allows fast copying of data from external systems to Hadoop to make data analysis more efficient and mitigates the risk of excessive load to external systems. 

"Connectivity to other databases and warehouses is a critical component for the evolution of Hadoop as an enterprise solution, and that's where Sqoop plays a very important role" said Deepak Reddy, Hadoop Manager at Coupons.com. "We use Sqoop extensively to store and exchange data between Hadoop and other warehouses like Netezza. The power of Sqoop also comes in the ability to write free-form queries against structured databases and pull that data into Hadoop."

"Sqoop has been an integral part of our production data pipeline" said Bohan Chen, Director of the Hadoop Development and Operations team at Apollo Group. "It provides a reliable and scalable way to import data from relational databases and export the aggregation results to relational databases."

Since entering the Apache Incubator in June 2011, Sqoop was quickly embraced as an ideal SQL-to-Hadoop data transfer solution. The Project provides connectors for popular systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server and DB2, and also allows for the development of drop-in connectors that provide high speed connectivity with specialized systems like enterprise data warehouses.

Craig Ling, Director of Business Systems at Tsavo Media, said "We adopted the use of Sqoop to transfer data into and out of Hadoop with our other systems over a year ago. It is straight forward and easy to use, which has opened the door to allow team members to start consuming data autonomously, maximizing the analytical value of our data repositories."

Availability and Oversight

Apache Sqoop software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. Apache Sqoop source code, documentation, mailing lists, and related resources are available at http://sqoop.apache.org/. A timeline of the project's history through graduation from the Apache Incubator is also available.

Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees nearly one hundred fifty leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 350 individual Members and 3,000 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(3)(c) not-for-profit charity, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including AMD, Basis Technology, Cloudera, Facebook, Google, IBM, HP, Hortonworks, Matt Mullenweg, Microsoft, PSW Group, SpringSource/VMware, and Yahoo!. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/.

"Apache", "Apache Sqoop", and "ApacheCon" are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.