Ehcache Joins Terracotta

Two of the most notable open source Java caching solutions have joined forces with Terracotta's purchase of Ehcache.  Terracotta, unique for providing JVM-level "pojo clustering", can take multi-threaded single-JVM apps and have them run across multiple JVMs with no code changes. Ehcache is nearly ubquitous with hundreds of thousands of deployments; it provides the standard HashMap style interface similar to Oracle Coherence. The combined entity likely has the largest install footprint of all Java caching products.  InfoQ spoke to Terractta CEO Amit Pandey and Ehcache founder Greg Luck.

For Ehcache users, joining Terracotta will bring:

1. The same Apache 2 license they currently rely on
2. A new hosting environment operated by Terracotta with state-of-the-art forums, source control, maven infrastructure, etc. all running alongside sourceforge infrastructure that will remain in place
3. A dedicated team of engineers working full-time on EHCache performance and features
4. A seamless and better-integrated upgrade path to add clustering and data distribution Ehcache-based applications.
5. Enterprise support and training for existing EHCache installations

For Terracotta users:

1. EHCache interfaces will replace Terracotta distributed cache as a single caching interface / standard for Terracotta distributed caching
2. A single-node version of Terracotta that can run on the desktop w/o their server array
3. Full freedom to run on the latest version of EHCache at all times, knowing it works with Terracotta
4. One vendor support structure for their caching interfaces / libraries as well as their scalability / reliability runtime.

Amit Pandey commented that:

first thing will ensure a seamless user experience, make sure that the integration between EHCAche and Terracotta gets tighter than today, such as offering a standalone download of EHCache with a distributed coherent backend from Terracotta. You can do that today since we’ve partnered but there is extra work that you have to do as a developer.  We'll be able to to make the joint performance of the integration different than the standalone piece with all the bytecode stuff that we’re well known for.

For Terracotta the acquisition is "definitely a competitive blow to Coherence" according to Amit. Buying Ehcache gives Terracotta an easier path to adoption for the existing Ehcache install base which Terracotta claims "numbers in the hundreds of thousands, including the vast majority of the Global 1000."  Buying Ehcache also gives more options for developers building distributed cache-based appliactions.  While Terracotta was known for transparent POJO clustering, "the transparency is our greatest strength but some also criticize us that people have to go figure that out" said Amit.  Greg Luck added:

Ehcache provies a very simple way of doing caching. I think Terracotta is simple but it requires a bit more thought. There are people who love TC for the pojo apporoach [but also] the mainstream that may not want to try something new. A lot of the sort of sizzle and attraction of TC appeals to the more cutting edge and people very pojo in their thinking but there isa whole class of folks in the J2EE world who are quite happy with a very simple api model.

Asked about the combined entitty's advantages over Coherence:

1. Footprint.  If you’ve built your app on ehcache, and you have a simple drop in upgrade for distribution now.
2. Multiple approaches to caching. Traditional Terracotta pojo caching as well as the api-based approach. 
3. Open source. Greg Luck said that "Coherence is not open source. For a developer to decide to use coherence the decision needs to be made at a higher level (cto), while Ehcache and Terracotta development can start from the grass roots. So for people that want massive scale with coherence, they can start with ehcache on one node then move distributed with terracotta easily."

Greg Luck commented that he sees consolidation as important to keep competitive, even though he had rejected 3 offers from other companies in the previous years:

As you saw with SpringSource last week, there is definitely consolidation going on, partly triggered by Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. Caching and distributed caching is particular important, and there is a risk that open source projects could get shut out. There is a still an array of new competitors like Apache Dynamite, Memcached - from my point of view it’s get big or get out.

On the topic of memcached, Greg Luck talked about the integration with Terrracotta eventually improving Ehcache server, a Java competitor to memcachd that offers a RESTful api allowing it to deploy behind load balancers for easier scale across clusters: "today, each node has a 100% copy of all that data. That means to you’re limited to whatever your GC can handle.  Our customers have run up to 20gig. What happens if you want to run a terabyte sized cache? Up to this point, you couldn’t do that with ehcache.. With Terracotta we’ll figure out what the product roadmap looks like."

Ehcache will remain an Apache 2 licensed project available as today via sourceforge, Maven, etc. The acquisition means that Greg Luck is joining Terracotta, and the copyrights on the EHcache codebase is now owned byTerracotta Inc., in the same manner that JBoss years ago purchased Hibernate.  Greg Luck posted a personal note about the acquisition.