Red Hat to Buy FuseSource to Bolster Middleware Play

Red Hat announced an agreement to acquire FuseSource, a provider of open-source integration and messaging solutions, in a move to beef up the Red Hat middleware portfolio.

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire open-source middleware provider FuseSource from Progress Software.

Red Hat did not disclose the financial details of the deal announced June 27 at its Red Hat Summit and JBoss World 2012 event in Boston. However, company officials said FuseSource, a provider of open-source integration and messaging, will enable Red Hat to accelerate the delivery of application integration products and services to enterprise customers.

€œApplication integration software is one of the fastest-growing segments of the enterprise software market,€ said Craig Muzilla, vice president and general manager of middleware at Red Hat, in a statement. €œAs cloud computing becomes more prevalent, enterprise customers are demanding greater application integration to enable seamless use of cloud computing. With the addition of FuseSource to our middleware portfolio, we will enable customers to experience greater integration capabilities and flexibility. FuseSource€™s technologies, expertise and commitment to open source make them a great fit.€

Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., FuseSource serves many Fortune 500 companies with open-source integration and open-source messaging products based on Apache ServiceMix, Apache ActiveMQ, Apache CFX and Apache Camel.

FuseSource technical leadership includes respected open-source contributors that are expected to continue to play important roles in the middleware community projects. Through the FuseSource acquisition, Red Hat will enhance capabilities within JBoss integration software. This technology complements the JBoss product line and will move Red Hat closer to the next generation of application integration products, Red Hat said.

eWEEK attended the FuseSource CamelOne 2012 event in May where the company advanced its €œIntegration Everywhere€ strategy with Fuse ESB Enterprise 7.0 and Fuse MQ Enterprise 7.0, two new open-source integration and messaging platforms. The prospect of a potential acquisition was an underlying current at CamelOne as the company was coming out of one of its best quarters yet, sources close to the company said. However, shortly following the conference, the company had layoffs that affected some key personnel.