Rob Bearden, the former chief operating officer of JBoss, has joined the advisory board of Appcelerator, strengthening the company’s aggressive charge into the rich Internet application market. Bearden is the sixth person with JBoss ties to join Appcelerator, whose platform helps companies quickly build Web-based applications with more functionality and less code.

“Rob’s 20-year track record of building rock-solid sales operations in the software industry will be a gold mine for Appcelerator as we ramp up operations and sales,” said Jeff Haynie, Appcelerator’s chief executive. “Rob’s addition to Appcelerator’s advisory board strengthens an already formidable team.”

Appcelerator is an open source Web platform that brings together RIA and service-oriented architecture. Appcelerator enables developers to quickly assemble cross-platform, service-oriented user interfaces using the skills and technologies they’ve already invested in to standardize their development environments and software infrastructures.

With Appcelerator, developers can assemble rich, interactive Web applications without the need for JavaScript or player-based plug-ins.

Today’s announcement reinforces Appcelerator’s ties to JBoss, the open source middleware leader. Bearden joins JBoss Founder and former CEO Marc Fleury and open source pioneer Larry Augustin, a former JBoss director, on Appcelerator’s advisory board.

Bearden has built strong global sales organizations and operations in the software industry for two decades. Most recently, he was chief operating officer for OpenSpan, a desktop integration software provider. As chief operating officer for JBoss, he managed worldwide operations and played a key role in its acquisition by Red Hat Software (NYSE: RHT). Before JBoss, Bearden was president of the Americas at i2 Technologies, a supply chain software provider. He also spent six years in executi
ve sales positions at Oracle.

“I’m looking forward to helping Appcelerator shake up the rich Internet application market,” said Bearden. “Companies are struggling with how to take advantage of all the money and time they’ve poured into SOA. Appcelerator answers the question once and for all by enabling them to build rich applications on top of that SOA infrastructure.”