SAN FRANCISCO — Red Hat has expanded its offerings to give customers value, choice and flexibility with its set of new Java application platform products.
In a dueling press conference, which was held at the same time as Sun Microsystems’ keynote during its CommunityOne event just down the street at the Moscone Center here, Red Hat announced the expansion of its application server offerings to include workload specific solutions designed to provide increased flexibility and choice for enterprise customers. Red Hat held its event at the Marriott in downtown San Francisco, while Sun kicked off its day-long JavaOne preview event only steps away.
Indeed, executing on its JBoss Open Choice strategy, the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio now includes solutions for all of the common Java application workloads; from simple web applications, to light and rich Java applications, to Java Enterprise Edition (EE) based applications. Moreover, JBoss platforms support a variety of popular programming models including Spring Framework, Seam and Google Web Toolkit. With this expansion, Red Hat now has one of the most comprehensive Java application server portfolios in the industry.
“In this challenging economic environment, customers are looking for high value alternatives to costly, bloated and complex software. Our enterprise customers are demanding flexible, standards-based solutions that match more closely with the way they’re starting to build and deploy Java applications,” said Craig Muzilla, vice president, middleware, Red Hat. “The solution set that we are delivering today, as the first in a series of expansions planned under our JBoss Open Choice strategy, addresses this market shift.”
Red Hat has taken a leadership role in redefining the enterprise Java market, with the goal of being the first company with a comprehensive open source middleware portfolio. Now more than ever, companies are moving away from a “one size fits all” approach in favor of more flexible, workload specific application servers that support a variety of programming models and APIs, Red Hat officials said.
With these expanded offerings, Red Hat now offers a full suite of Java application solutions that provide a simple, standard and flexible alternative to more complex and costly proprietary middleware that are often restricted to single APIs and programming models. Red Hat’s next generation Java platforms are designed to meet market demands; as IT budgets shrink and customers are looking to innovate to maintain their competitive advantage, they are relying on lighter weight application architectures and a variety of new and innovative programming models and approaches, the company said.
“We’ve experienced the benefits of JBoss Enterprise Middleware first hand through reduced costs and higher staff productivity. As we look at our expanded use of open source, Red Hat’s strategy is a perfect fit for the application workloads we require,” said Ravi Simhambhatla, director of architecture, Virgin America.
Designed to Provide Confidence
Red Hat’s expanded Java application server portfolio now includes application server platforms, Java application frameworks, and productivity tools. Regarding application server platforms, Red Hat plans to provide three workload-based application server runtime solutions that specifically target the most common workloads required by today’s dynamic enterprise Java applications. According to Red Hat these are:
“??Ç JBoss Enterprise Application Platform: Red Hat’s current solution for highly transactional applications, utilizing the Java Enterprise Edition (EE) programming approach. It leverages the popular JBoss Application Server with enterprise features for clustering, caching, messaging, transactions and a full web services stack. Over the last year, Red Hat customers have been standardizing on the current Application Platform 4.3 release. Early access programs are underway for the next major release, Application Platform 5.0.??Ç JBoss Enterprise Web Platform: A new solution for mid-size workloads, focusing on light and rich Java applications. Web Platform is a slimmed down version of the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. Web Platform builds upon the new Java EE Web Profile to provide a lightweight version of the popular JBoss Application Server, while still providing enterprise features for clustering, caching and simple web services.??Ç JBoss Enterprise Web Server: Now available, a solution for the lightest Java workloads. Targeted at simple web applications, JBoss Enterprise Web Server provides enterprises with a stable, long-term enterprise product support lifecycle for Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat and all of the common connectors used in between.“
Meanwhile, Red Hat also will offer Java developers enterprise product support for popular application frameworks such as Spring Framework and JBoss Seam. Each framework is expected to be pre-integrated into both JBoss Enterprise Application & Web Platforms and can also be added to JBoss Enterprise Web Server. The solutions provided in this layer include JBoss Hibernate, JBoss Seam and JBoss Web Framework Kit, which includes popular open source frameworks used for web application development. This first release of Web Framework Kit includes enterprise-class versions of Google Web Toolkit, RichFaces, Spring Framework and Struts. Future versions are expected to include additional rich application frameworks.
In addition Red Hat is offering JBoss productivity tools including the JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss Operations Network.
With the JBoss Open Choice application platform strategy, JBoss hopes to provide a single environment for deploying a variety of programming models with a common platform, making it easier to develop and deploy applications, the company said. At the heart of the JBoss Open Choice strategy is the JBoss Microcontainer, a new application platform architecture that isolates core enterprise class platform services from the variety of container and framework choices available today. With JBoss Open Choice, Red Hat plans to provide application developers with the ability to choose the framework, language and programming technologies that best fit the application requirements they are trying to achieve, the company said.
Indeed, the JBoss Open Choice strategy is intended to enable customers to embrace the latest innovations of the Java community today and represent an investment in the future as it will seek to accommodate the next wave of changes to Java for the enterprise.
“With an uncertain future and the ever-changing world of Java, the JBoss Open Choice strategy is designed to provide customers with the confidence, to choose the programming and deployment model that works for them without sacrificing performance,” said Craig Muzilla, vice president, Middleware, Red Hat, in a statement. “Despite all of the market shifts, Red Hat aims to remain a trusted source for valuable and innovative solutions in the Java market.”
Moreover, Red Hat officials said the company has developed the JBoss Open Choice strategy in an effort to address the new, dynamic nature of the Java market and to provide the next generation of application server platforms.