Over the recent few weeks, we have received several inquiries regarding the use of Excelsior JET to protect and accelerate Web applications running in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2. By pure coincidence, I have been working on a series of articles on running Apache Tomcat on EC2 for the general Java Web developer audience. The first, introductory article is ready, please check it out and let me know what you think:
Cat in the Cloud: Apache Tomcat in Amazon EC2. Part I – The Basics
Update 08-Dec-2011: The second part is out:
Cat in the Cloud: Apache Tomcat in Amazon EC2. Part II – Taking Control Over Your Java Stack
I am happy to announce that Excelsior JET 7.6, originally scheduled for October, has become generally available yesterday, September 19. Download now
The Difference Is Under The Hood
As explained in the roadmap, this release delivers the first results of our core engine review/rewrite work on which we have been concentrated ever since the previous release. Excelsior JET 7.6 does not show off any shiny new features, but, under the hood, the new engine parts are expected to boost application performance on multi-core/CPU systems.
Also included is the support for the latest versions of Java SE 6, Eclipse RCP, and Apache Tomcat.
Update 25-Oct-2011: We have verified that Excelsior JET 7.6 is also interoperable with Eclipse SDK 4.1, so you may take advantage of the latest Eclipse RCP improvements.
Finally, we have addressed a handful of stability issues and brought a few implementation-defined aspects of our JVM behavior into line with the reference implementation.
Please take it out for a spin and let us know if you feel the difference!
See also: Full list of improvements in Excelsior JET 7.6
We have re-released xFunction under a freeware license and ceased its further development officially. We shall continue supporting xFunction customers that have purchased a commercial license for another twelve months.
If you need a JNI proxy, have a look at JNA (Java Native Access), which provides essentially the same functionality as xFunction, is available for more platforms, and is open sourced under LGPL.
If JNA does not work for you or you cannot use LGPL software, please feel free to continue using xFunction. We may even port it to a platform of your choice, at your expense.
For the avoidance of doubt, our flagship product, Excelsior JET, is and shall remain our top priority.
If you have been following Excelsior JET for the last few years, you may have noticed that our list prices have not changed since the introduction of Basic Support option two and a half years ago. Based on the actual sales figures, cost structure analysis and the feedback we have been receiving, we have decided to make the following changes today:
- All prices for the Windows version will remain the same for now. This includes new licenses, upgrades, and support contract renewals for all editions.
- Immediately going down are the prices of:
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New licenses (slightly) and support contract renewals (substantially) for Excelsior JET, Standard Edition for Linux
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Support contract renewals for Excelsior JET, Professional Edition for Linux (considerably)
- To be raised on Monday September 19th are the prices of:
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New licenses and upgrades of Excelsior JET, Professional Edition for Linux
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New licenses, upgrades, and support contract renewals for Excelsior JET, Enterprise Edition for Linux
Windows+Linux bundle prices change accordingly, but to a smaller percentage.
Our online store already displays old and new prices if you click on “Show details” in the price adjustment notice.
The updated Excelsior JET Roadmap is back online.
In brief: the last 32-bit-only version is on track for October release, the first 64-bit preview is set to see the light of day before the end of 2011, and Java 7 is put aside in favor of an earlier 64-bit release, in turn expected to occur in about a year from now.
We understand this may not align with your plans for Java 7 and therefore would greatly appreciate your feedback. Please post in the comments or vote in the forum poll.
We are pleased to announce that a public beta of Excelsior Delivery 2.2 is available for download.
The major new feature of this release is the option to create installation packages in MSI format, which is the native format for Windows Installer.
Specifically, the Packager can now export your project as a set of files that may be provided as input to WiX, an open source toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code, originally developed by Microsoft.
The Packager can also invoke WiX tools directly, essentially enabling you to use Excelsior Delivery as a GUI front-end for WiX. You may also use this feature to migrate your project to a WiX-based setup authoring tool if necessary.
We would greatly appreciate your feedback.
Excelsior Microbusiness Licensing Program enables small companies and self-employed professionals to purchase our main product at a substantial discount.
A small South African consultancy was the first to take advantage of this Program back on May 7, 2008, so technically today is its third anniversary – time to share some results with the world.
But first, for those of you who came to this post without knowing much about us and our product, let me elaborate a bit on why we had introduced the Program in the first place.
Excelsior JET is a Java software development tool licensed per seat. However, it is not an IDE that each developer uses on a daily basis, but rather an optimization and packaging tool that is invoked during automated builds most of the time. Therefore it is often sufficient to purchase just one license for a group of developers. This effectively makes the price per developer too high for the most price-sensitive customers: microISVs, early stage startups, and other very small businesses employing just one or two software engineers. We thought it would be fair to offer discounts to such customers.
Now, without disclosing the absolute sales figures, I can tell you that this Program has accounted for over 35% of all new license sales in 2010 in terms of the number of licenses sold, which translated to 27.5% in terms of revenue:
These figures however do not include upgrades or support contract renewals, to which the participants of the Program contribute much less frequently than other customers, I must admit.
Please do not hesitate to share your experience/opinions and ask questions in the comments.
Tomorrow be an exciting day for all current and former Excelsior JET team members, as it was December 8, 2000 when version 1.0 saw the light of day. Moreover, the first sale took place in just a few hours, so we immediately threw a party!
On behalf of the team, I would like to thank you for your continued interest in our product. To our regret, we cannot invite you to our party, but we have a small present for you:
Dec 08, 2010
EVERYONE GETS
10% OFF
ONE WINNER GETS
FULL REFUND
Coupon code:
TENYEARS
< Order Now >
First, anyone purchasing a new Excelsior JET license, upgrade, or support contract renewal on December 08, 2010 can get a 10% discount by entering coupon code TENYEARS before checkout.
Second, one lucky, randomly selected user of that coupon will get the cost of one purchased item (new license, upgrade, or renewal) fully refunded!
The fine print:
The coupon is valid on December 8, 2010 in all time zones. Depending on your time zone, it may also be valid a few hours before or after that date.
For technical reasons, the offer may not be combined with the discounts extended under the academic and microbusiness licensing programs. You may still claim it in the form of support period extension. Just make your purchase on December 8, 2010 and email us.
Should the winner’s order contain two of more separate items, e.g. a support contract renewal and a license upgrade, the remaining 90% of the most expensive item cost will be refunded. Windows+Linux bundles count as one item.
Tags: offer
What surprised me most in our EclipseCon 2010 experience was the number of booth visitors saying that application startup time is important to them. Fortunately, we have already had the Startup Accelerator in the works, and today it is the main highlight of Excelsior JET 7.2 release. Used together with the previously implemented Startup Optimizer, it can reduce the cold startup time of your Java application up to a factor of 3, aligning it with the native rivals it may have.
We also love to hear from our existing customers, and when we hear, we listen. In our last customer survey, long build times firmly occupied the top spot in the list of annoyances. Our tests show that upgrading to version 7.2 should reduce the build time by at least 30% compared to the previous version. Compilation of large Java applications consisting of tens of thousands of classes can be twice as fast now.
An eagerly awaited usability enhancement, Installation Toolkit tweaks, Java SE 6u20 support, and performance/stability improvements complete the list.
Full list of new features and improvements in Excelsior JET 7.2
Download Excelsior JET 7.2 Evaluation Package
Tags: startup
We do not do trade shows often. In fact, we did it only once, and that was JavaOne 2004. This year we have decided to try a more targeted approach, and will be showcasing our Eclipse RCP application security solution at EclipseCon, March 22-25, 2010 in Santa Clara, CA.
Also on display will be an illustration of interoperability of Excelsior JET with conventional Java tools, using the Java GUI testing tool QF-Test from QFS as an example.
Come talk to us and see the natively compiled Eclipse IDE automatically tested at Booth #13!
Official press-release (joint with QFS)
