IonaThere aren’t too many people that regularly read this blog any more (Google Analytics tells me so), but that will change that soon with some interesting new content related to my new job.  New job you ask?  Well, not exactly new…  Almost 5 months ago in October 2007 I started working for IONA Technologies and quietly stopped promoting myself as an independent consultant via Organic Element.  Specifically, I now work for the IONA Open Source group which also happens to employ the founders and developers of such projects as Apache ActiveMQ, ServiceMix, Camel, and CXF.

It is really a great privilege to work with guys such as Rob Davies, James Strachan, Hiram Chirino, Bruce Snyder, and Guillaume Nodet on a daily basis.  It was not an easy decision to leave behind a comfortable and established consulting practice and move to the world of commercial open source software development, but at this point I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  After doing integration work for almost 15 years (crap, that seems like a really long time) it is very rewarding to use that experience working on open source projects with long term accountability rather than short term internal projects.

Having said that, I am also now a committer on Apache ServiceMix since January 2008 and I have been a committer on Apache Directory Server since January 2007 so I am also happy to be branching out my experience at Apache, although it is extremely time difficult to work on two major open source projects at the same time so my time on Directory Server has been limited lately.  I have no regrets, and there is no looking back.  More great things to come!