Yeaton explained that there are There will also be a certified JBoss Enterprise
Red Hat is expanding its JBoss middleware efforts with new initiatives that make it easier to acquire and develop with
its open source applications technologies. The open source vendor is also
acquiring data-management and integration software vendor MetaMatrix for an
undisclosed sum.
Red Hat is aiming to take a bigger chunk of the multi-billion-dollar middleware application space by making a play to move legacy
applications to an open source infrastructure.
“It’s a pretty big step forward,” Tim Yeaton, senior vice president of
enterprise solutions at Red Hat, said on a conference call announcing the
initiative. “Particularly in the middleware with the addition of MetaMatrix
and our more refined more simplified subscription model that will expand and
accelerate the adoption of various middleware technologies more broadly.”
Yeaton declined to provide financial details of the MetaMatrix transaction,
though he did note that the deal is expected to close in the next 60 days,
with MetaMatrix personnel moving to Red Hat.
problems today with data-intensive apps like Business Intelligence and any
app that is trying to construct a single view of a customer or transaction. “MetaMatrix addresses those issues with a federated data-service layer that
abstracts apps from the data sources and makes the data available as a
service.”
The plan, according to Yeaton, is to open source the MetaMatrix technology as
quickly as it is feasible to do so.
Red Hat also unveiled a major change in the way people can actually
acquire JBoss technologies. To date users have had to take an a la carte
approach to getting a full JBoss stack. Going forward there will be the
JBoss.org community site, which will allow developers to get the leading edge
of JBoss technologies.
Platform distribution that will include all the core JBoss middleware
application technologies.
The general idea is similar to what Red Hat does with its Fedora Linux community
distribution. The JBoss.org community will be a place where more rapid
innovation and releases can occur.
Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management for the JBoss division
at Red Hat, explained on the conference call that Red Hat has also refocused
its JBoss.org portal to give it more community appeal. Part of that appeal
according to Connolly is to highlight JBoss’s interactions with other open
source communities including Apache, Sun’s Glassfish and others.
“Later in the year we’ll be rolling out a platform for SOA integration and
business-process integration that will integrate new technology,” Connolly said. Part of that integration effort will include an ESB (Enterprise Service Bus)
project that the JBoss.org community is working on.
Red Hat is also rolling out a new developer support program that Connolly
described as an effort to appeal as early as possible to developers.
Red Hat Developer Support Subscriptions offer Red Hat’s expertise and
backing for software developers to help get SOA, Java and Linux
development projects into production.
In early March, Red Hat acquired a trio of AJAX projects from
tools vendor Exadel. The company plans on rolling them into the JBoss ecosystem. One of those products is set to be re-launched in early summer as Red Hat
Developer Studio. The Studio is expected to become a part of a Red Hat
Developer program.
Red Hat
acquired JBoss just over a year ago for $350 million.
Red Hat Expands JBoss Developer Push
