HP Throws Weight Behind MySQL, JBoss

HP stepped up its commitment to open source software Monday by pledging to offer and support the MySQL database server and JBoss application server software in its servers.


The Palo Alto, Calif. systems vendor said it has inked agreements with those open source purveyors to certify and support MySQL and JBoss software on its servers.


Jeffrey Wade, manager of Linux Marketing Communications at HP, said the certifications factor in the company’s Linux reference architecture is a software stack that covers everything from the hardware to the operating system, drivers and management agents.


Deployed on HP ProLiant servers, the open source Linux Reference Architectures are based on software from MySQL, JBoss, Apache, and OpenLDAP. The company’s commercial Linux Reference Architectures are based on product from Oracle, BEA and SAP.


Both MySQL and JBoss will join the HP Partner Program and receive joint testing and engineering support on HP’s hardware systems.


Wade told internetnews.com the added layer of MySQL and JBoss support addresses one of the largest concerns customers have today in opting to pick open source technology over mainstay proprietary products such as Microsoft Windows, Sun Microsystems’ Solaris or
UNIX.


“We can provide support for that entire solution stack and we’re also now giving our customers flexibility in choice and the types of solutions they want to deploy whether that’s a commercial or open source application,” Wade said.

Bob Bickel, vice president of strategy and corporate development at JBoss, said commercial use remains somewhat constrained because a CIO doesn’t know whom they can turn to for support.

“They don’t know who they can turn to for indemnification,” Bickel told internetnews.com. “Yeah, it works great and it’s cheap but what happens in the middle of their big selling season if something goes down. Who do they turn to and get it from. What HP’s doing is taking an all encompassing view of this with certification and testing.”


Testing keeps customers from guessing what version of a Java virtual machine, operating system, MySQL or JBoss product can all work together in a guaranteed way, Bickel explained.


MySQL Vice President of Marketing Zack Urlocker said companies such as Sabre are using an open source stack for business applications. Partnering with HP, then, provides great validation for MySQL and JBoss software.


“A couple of years ago the big knock on open source was that it might be good on the periphery or Web applications, but was not quite ready for business critical applications,” Urlocker told internetnews.com. “Now, the No. 1 issues have been support. People who have had a lot of success with Linux are now looking at how to use a whole open source stack.”


The deal is truly symbiotic. While MySQL and JBoss get backing from a technology driver such as HP, HP gets the added credibility of being cozy with open source, a label many enterprises and HP rivals, such as IBM and Dell , are working toward.


Linux sales are trending tall regardless; according to recent hardware server and database software studies from high-tech research outfit Gartner.


Despite legal threats from SCO Group and competition from Microsoft, Gartner said Linux continued to be the growth powerhouse in the operating systems server market, with a revenue increase of 57.3 percent in the first quarter of 2004.


Gartner also found that Linux siphoned market share from UNIX in the relational database management system (RDBMS) market, a niche that grew 158 percent from $116 million in new license revenue in 2002 to nearly $300 million in 2003.

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