Ex-JBoss head Fleury joins startup

by Chris Kanaracus

December 12, 2007 —

JBoss founder Marc Fleury
has resurfaced as a paid advisor to Appcelerator, a startup based in Atlanta
that makes a toolkit for developing rich Internet applications (RIA).

Red Hat bought JBoss, a maker of open-source middleware, in 2006 for US$350
million. The outspoken Fleury oversaw Red Hat's JBoss division until quitting
early this year, and since then has largely avoided the limelight.

He said he hopes to raise Appcelerator's profile in the increasingly crowded
RIA space, which is led by the likes of Adobe's Flex, among others.

"The big dog is clearly Flex," Fleury said, but "the fact that
it is so crowded and there is no clear winner is also an indication there is
a market of opportunity."

Fleury described his role with Appcelerator as his "first engagement with
the industry" since leaving JBoss. "I liked the product, I liked the
tech, and figured I could help."

But Fleury said he essentially remains retired: "My other projects include
family."

Fleury is the second former JBoss employee to join Appcelerator, following
the company's hiring of Ben Sabrin as vice president of strategy and business
development.

The company describes its Appcelerator
Platform as ideal for creating what it calls "service-oriented user
interfaces."

The platform provides an abstraction layer that allows developers to use AJAX
and DHTML without needing to program in JavaScript themselves, and provides
a widget library for pulling together common components. The platform is available
under a GPLv2 license, and the company has created software development kits
for Java, Ruby, PHP, .Net and Python.

"We're really focusing on RIA-enabling the enterprise," said CEO
Jeff Haynie.

IDG News Service