Red Hat Delivers New JBoss Java Application Platform for the Cloud

Red Hat has announced the delivery of its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0, a core middleware component of the company's JBoss Open Choice strategy that represents the next generation Java application platform and will be integral to Red Hat's cloud foundation, the company said.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 supports developer choice and aims to provide a consistent foundation to support the wide variety of Java programming and component models, including Plain Old Java Objects, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), Spring Framework, Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi), Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and a variety of Rich Internet Application (RIA) frameworks and dynamic languages.

In essence, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 provides for the future of Java development and foundation for cloud computing.

Indeed, new features of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 include a second-generation service-based architecture, improved management and configuration via an embedded version of the JBoss Operations Network administrative console, Java EE support, and major including enterprise versions of the JBoss Application Server, Hibernate, Seam, JBoss Cache and JBoss Web Services. The new release also features support for distributed transactions and comprehensive web services stack support.

Red Hat announced the news at the co-located Red Hat Summit/JBoss World conference in Chicago on Sept. 1.

"JBoss Enterprise Middleware allows us to be extremely flexible with our architecture. We can deploy on a range of options to suit our needs which is unlike any other IT vendor we have considered," said Tim Dion, chief information officer at Sensei Inc., a developer of innovative mobile and Web-based solutions that motivate and empower consumers to take charge of their well-being. "With the addition of cloud enabled platforms Red Hat is anticipating our technology needs for the future which will help us make a seamless transition into cloud computing environments. Healthcare innovation, and the role mobile technology is playing in particular, is transforming individuals and organizations. Cloud computing environments like JBoss help bring these innovations to the masses."

Moreover, recent research from IDC indicates that spending on IT cloud services will grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012 and capturing 25 percent of IT spending growth in 2012 and nearly a third of growth the following year.

“Not only have we delivered on our JBoss Open Choice strategy by releasing JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0, but we are contributing to the future of Java application platforms from traditional to cloud-based environments,” said Craig Muzilla, vice president of middleware at Red Hat, in a statement. “Ultimately, we aim to give customers the flexibility to choose the right programming and deployment models to stay ahead of their competition.”

Red Hat's middleware portfolio is designed to help customers take advantage of cloud computing, the company said. As a core component of Red Hat's cloud computing foundation, customers should be able to combine JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux with integrated virtualization technologies that provide customers with a fully virtualized, standards-based enterprise open source cloud computing service platform, supporting both on-premise and off-premise cloud deployments, Red Hat officials said.

The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is among the first commercially available Java EE application servers available in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), JBoss said. This new release is expected to also be made available on Amazon EC2, as well as other environments that achieve Red Hat's Premier Cloud Provider Certification, the company said.

In addition, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 is designed to leverage a second generation service-based Microcontainer architecture to provide a consistent and modular series of enterprise deployment features for clustering, caching, transactions, web services, security and more, regardless of the selected programming model or deployment style, JBoss officials said.

The JBoss Microcontainer architecture makes it possible for JBoss solutions to support many different programming models, company officials said. It also makes it possible to separate enterprise services to be more configurable, which enables easier development and deployment. The new release also features an advanced administrative console that makes configuring traditional and cloud-based application grids simpler and easier.

Meanwhile, developer tooling is available with JBoss Developer Studio, an Eclipse-based integrated development environment that provides a comprehensive set of tools developers need to quickly build rich, highly interactive applications and services using technologies like Seam, Java EE, Spring, Hibernate, Asynchronous JavaScript and X M L (AJAX), RichFaces and more.