Exception: Platform hasn't been started yet

Hello,
I'm getting this exception when I connect to the repository

Platform hasn't been started yet

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Platform hasn't been started yet

at com.ibm.team.repository.client.TeamPlatform.getTeamRepositoryService(TeamPlatform.java:122)

I'm using this line to get the repository.

ITeamRepository repository = TeamPlatform.getTeamRepositoryService().getTeamRepository(REPOSITORY_ADDRESS);

What does it mean the platform hasn't started? The Jazz server is up and running and I can connect to it. The same code works fine in a plain Java setting. Is there a timing issue somewhere?

Under which circumstances the InternalTeamPlatform is not started and gets this exception?

 public static final synchronized ITeamRepositoryService getTeamRepositoryService() {

        if (!InternalTeamPlatform.getDefault().isStarted()) {

            throw new IllegalStateException("Platform hasn't been started yet"); //$NON-NLS-1$

        }

        if (repositoryService == null) {

            repositoryService = new TeamRepositoryService();

        }

        return repositoryService;

    }

Thank you