Hi, I'm Axel.
Software is what I do.
I architect, develop, audit, talk, train and write.



Your Software Architecture. Audited.
an honest and untainted view of your software architecture.
Training
Delivered at your company.
Architecting for Continuous Delivery & Zero Downtime
Two day on-site intensive hands-on training
Continuous Delivery is all the hype these days. This training makes it a reality. We start with an overview of what Continuous Delivery is and how it can help you. We then quickly dive into the details. You will learn what it takes to architect a Java application so that it can be delivered continuously into production, with code, configuration and database delta, multiple times a day, with Zero Downtime.
Buckle up! This class is intensive and hands-on. You build an entire Java web app to the point where it deploys continuously, with zero downtime. We tackle the hard problems with a battle-tested approach you will be able to apply immediately.

Effective Database Migrations with Flyway
One day on-site training
One day of intensive Flyway instruction. We begin with a quick overview of what problems database migration tools set out to solve. We then quickly move into thorough coverage of everything from Flyway basics to topics like existing project integration, API and build tool plugins. We finally cover more advanced topics like effective test data management, backward compatible migrations and zero-downtime migrations.
This class comes with plenty of hands-on time with Flyway and will take you from complete newcomer status to Flyway competence, or from passing familiarity to Flyway and database migrations expertise.
Speaking
The focus has been Immutable Infrastructure, Continuous Delivery, Flyway and Boxfuse.


Architecture for the Cloud
From my talk at JavaZone 2015 in Oslo, Norway.
Immutable Infrastructure
From my talk at Geecon 2015 in Krakow, Poland.
Continuous Delivery
From my talk at Jfokus 2014 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Flyway
From my talk at Devoxx UK 2015 in London, UK.
Articles
These are the most popular ones.

Boxfuse
Boxfuse is the easiest way to deploy your JVM-based applications to AWS.
Boxfuse is the easiest way to deploy your JVM-based applications to AWS.
Boxfuse builds minimal fully-provisioned images in seconds. These images are immutable and tailor-made to do only one thing: run your app as efficiently as possible on the cloud.
There is no ssh, no general purpose operating system and no tedious provisioning. Boxfuse images are lean, secure and efficient. You can run them on VirtualBox for development and deploy them unchanged and with zero downtime on AWS for test and production.
While Boxfuse works with any .jar or .war file, it is especially optimized for Spring Boot, Dropwizard, Tomcat and TomEE.
All you need is a GitHub user to get started. The Boxfuse free plan aligns perfectly with the AWS free tier, so you can deploy your application to EC2 completely free.

Flyway
At 4,300,000 downloads per year it is the industry de facto standard for database migrations.
Flyway is an open-source database migration tool. It strongly favors simplicity and convention over configuration.
It is based around just 7 basic commands: Migrate, Undo, Clean, Info, Validate, Baseline and Repair.
Migrations can be written in SQL (database-specific syntax (such as PL/SQL, T-SQL, ...) is supported) or Java (for advanced data transformations or dealing with LOBs).
It has a Command-line client. If you are on the JVM, we recommend using the Java API (also works on Android) for migrating the database on application startup. Alternatively, you can also use the Maven plugin, Gradle plugin, SBT plugin or the Ant tasks.
And if that not enough, there are plugins available for Spring Boot, Dropwizard, Grails, Play, Griffon, Grunt, Ninja and more!
Supported databases are Oracle, SQL Server, SQL Azure, DB2, MySQL (including Amazon RDS), MariaDB, Google Cloud SQL, PostgreSQL (including Amazon RDS and Heroku), Redshift, CockroachDB, Sybase ASE, Informix, H2, Hsql Derby and SQLite.
About Axel

I'm the founder and CEO of Boxfuse GmbH. Boxfuse turns your JVM app into a secure & immutable machine image in seconds, which can be run both on your laptop and in the cloud.
I'm also the founder and project lead of Flyway, the open-source database migration tool.
Additionally I regularly speak at many large international conferences including JavaOne, Devoxx, Jfokus, JavaZone, JAX, ...
You can find me on Twitter as @axelfontaine
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