We offer to contribute the following changes to UPS:

1) Replace EJB persistence with Spring + JPA
2) Manage datasource using Spring
3) Manage system properties using spring bean
4) Replace Async EJB with Spring Async
5) Replace JEB Queues with Reactive Steams.
6) Replace arquillian tests with spring + jetty

Advantages for the above stack:
1) e2e tests completes in less then a min
2) deployment can be done to any servlet container
3) additional e2e can be easily added to REST layer.

We are using a UPS version including the above changes for more then a year.
If you find this change interesting please point me to the right discussion forum.