Joseph J. Allaire (born 1969), better known professionally as J. J. Allaire, is an American-born

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

and

Internet entrepreneur An Internet entrepreneur is an owner, founder or manager of an Internet-based business. This list includes Internet company founders and people brought on to companies for their general business or accounting acumen, as is the case with some CEOs ...

. He created the

ColdFusion Adobe ColdFusion is a commercial rapid web-application development computing platform created by J. J. Allaire in 1995. (The programming language used with that platform is also commonly called ColdFusion, though is more accurately known as CF ...

programming language and web application server, founded

Allaire Corporation Allaire Corporation was a computer software company founded by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in Minnesota, later headquartered in Cambridge, then Newton, Massachusetts. It commenced operations in May 1995, had its initial public offering on NASDAQ (tradi ...

OnFolio Windows Live Toolbar was a browser extension toolbar for Internet Explorer. It superseded MSN Search Toolbar. Windows Live Toolbar provided a simple search interface that starts to list results as the user types in a search query and uses Bing a ...

, FitNow, and

RStudio RStudio IDE (or RStudio) is an integrated development environment for R, a programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It's available in two formats: RStudio Desktop is a regular desktop application while RStudio Server runs ...

, and created LoseIt! and

Windows Live Writer Windows Live Writer is a discontinued desktop blog-publishing application that was developed by Microsoft and distributed as part of the Windows Live suite of apps. The last major release of Windows Live Writer came out in 2012 ( end-of-life), an ...

. Allaire is currently the founder and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

statistical computing Computational statistics, or statistical computing, is the study which is the intersection of statistics and computer science, and refers to the statistical methods that are enabled by using computational methods. It is the area of computational ...

company Posit (formerly RStudio Inc).

Early life

Joseph J Allaire received his bachelor's degree from

Macalester College Macalester College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1874, Macalester is exclusively an undergraduate institution with an enrollment of 2,142 students in the fall of 2023. The college ha ...

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 311,527, making it Minnesota's second-most populous city a ...

in 1991.

ColdFusion and Allaire Corporation

In 1995, Allaire created

. The same year, Allaire founded

Minneapolis, Minnesota Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

. Allaire moved the company to

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

in 1996 with his brother and founding team member,

Jeremy Allaire Jeremy D. Allaire (born 13 May 1971) is an American technologist and Internet entrepreneur. He is CEO and founder of the digital currency company Circle and chairman of the board of Brightcove. With his brother JJ Allaire, he is a co-founder of ...

. Allaire served as the Chairman and

of Allaire Corporation, then as its Executive Vice President of Products after hiring David Orfao as the company's

. Allaire Corporation had an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

in 1999. In 2001, Allaire Corporation was acquired by

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...

Onfolio, Microsoft, and Windows Live Writer

In 2002, Allaire co-founded

Onfolio Windows Live Toolbar was a browser extension toolbar for Internet Explorer. It superseded MSN Search Toolbar. Windows Live Toolbar provided a simple search interface that starts to list results as the user types in a search query and uses Bing a ...

with Adam Berrey and Charles Teague and led the development of its suite of tools for web research and publishing, released in 2004. Onfolio was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 2006. At Microsoft, Allaire created a blog publishing product called

, initially released in 2007. Windows Live Writer was distributed by Microsoft as part of

Windows Essentials Windows Essentials (formerly Windows Live Essentials and Windows Live Installer) is a discontinued suite of Microsoft freeware applications that includes email, instant messaging, photo sharing, blogging, and parental control software. ''Essenti ...

, until it was discontinued in 2015 and forked into an open-source version called Open Live Writer.

FitNow and Lose It!

In 2008, Allaire, Paul DiCristina and Charles Teague co-founded FitNow, a company dedicated to mobile health and fitness applications, and created Lose It!, a mobile weight loss application with over 17 million users.

RStudio

In 2009, Allaire founded

, a company that builds tools for the R

environment. Allaire created the company's flagship product

, a 2015

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (''IW'') is an American information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a Web-only publication. Its parent company is International Data Group, and its sister pu ...

Technology of the Year Award recipient. Beginning in 2013, Allaire worked on the R Markdown ecosystem of scientific publishing packages, including R Markdown, Distill for R, and Flexdashboard. From 2018 through 2020, Allaire worked on R interfaces to Python, and R versions of the TensorFlow and Keras Python packages. In 2021, Allaire and Charles Teague created

Quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

, a Jupyter-based scientific publishing system. Quarto was publicly announced in 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allaire, Joseph J. 1969 births Living people People from South Bend, Indiana Businesspeople from Minnesota Macalester College alumni 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople American computer businesspeople American software engineers American technology chief executives American technology company founders Businesspeople in software 21st-century American inventors R (programming language) people