Red Hat releases JBoss Developer Studio 2

From the 'developers, developers, developers' files:

Red Hat is expanding its software development portfolio today with the official release of JBoss Developer Studio 2 - Portfolio Edition. It's an interesting release that packages together an Eclipse based dev tool with JBoss' Enterprise
Application, Portal, SOA and Data Services Platforms.

The JBoss Developer Studio tool itself is an interesting one -- it was originally developed as a closed source technology by tech vendor Exadel called Exadel Studio Pro. Red Hat acquired several Exaled technologies in March of 2007 including the Studio. In December of 2007, Red Hat completely open sourced the tool and renamed it JBoss Developer Studio (JBDS).

Having a fully integrated development studio is a key move in the middleware space for Red Hat in my opinion. Developers can now subscribe to a complete development enviroment that is more than just the IDE. As Red Hat continues to evolve its software business from being more than just a platform play, having robust development tools will play a critical role.

The timing of Red Hat's announcement is important too. This week is Eclipsecon the big yearly gathering of those that participate in the Eclipse ecosystem -- which includes JBoss.