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Java Platform-as-a-Service fledgling CloudBees, which just announced a $4 million A round a few weeks ago, has acquired Java Platform-as-a-Service pioneer Stax Networks. Terms were not disclosed.

The merger is supposed to accelerate the delivery of CloudBees’ promised RUN@cloud production deployment vehicle, which was scheduled for release in Q1 and is now set for January.

Stax has had a Java application platform for the cloud out for the last couple of years and reportedly 3,000 applications have been deployed on the thing. The plan is to integrate the Stax platform with existing CloudBees technology to create RUN@cloud and get a running jump on what promises to be a contested market.

CloudBees already has a DEV@cloud service in beta with a reported 300 customers that should also be generally available in January for the price of a monthly subscription.

It offers developers Java lifecycle tools pre-configured and maintained on the cloud - initially EC2 - that they can use to develop, build and test applications.

DEV@cloud makes Hudson, the popular open source continuous integration server, available as a cloud service. Oracle has recently gotten very proprietary about Hudson, creating a lot of developer angst and possibly a full-blown rupturing fork, but that’s another story.

RUN@cloud is supposed to give developers a native cloud platform where they can deploy the applications they developed without having to worry about servers, virtual machines, clustering or scaling or without leaving the CloudBees service. The idea is to put the focus on applications, not the underlying widgetry.

CloudBees says when RUN@cloud wends its way out it’ll be the first company to have a fully integrated development-to-production solution for the cloud environment, soup-to-nuts application lifecycle in the cloud.

CloudBees competes with Google App Engine, which it dismissed as low-end, and expects to compete with VMware’s upcoming SpringSource Code2cloud, due to beta next year, as well as whatever comes of Red Hat’s acquisition of Makara. CloudBees claims it’s got the lead.

Stax was started in 2007 by Spike Washburn, a founding member of the WebSphere team and later the JRun team at Allaire/Macromedia on seed money provided by JJ Allaire, who created what started out as Allaire’s ColdFusion.

CloudBees was started in August by Sacha Labourey, the former CTO of JBoss, along with engineers from JBoss and the GlassFish team at Sun. CloudBees got funded by Matrix Partners and individual investors like JBoss founder Marc Fleury.

Washburn figures CloudBees has the resources to take the Stax platform to a wider audience.