I can understand why you would think that, my explanation doesn't really do it justice. I it really does do quite a lot more and provides a much richer domain specific language to do this. Since I failed to communicate it last time I'll not try again, but again I can see why you might think that. Maven attempts to do something similar to Capistrano except that I haven't found a JMX-oriented Maven plugin, which is key for J[2]EE apps.