Red Hat is a leading technology vendor for its Linux platform and JBoss
middleware lines of business. Though it has tremendous in-house technical
expertise, Red Hat is actually going to a third party vendor for the
technology needed to build the Web content management system for the new
JBoss.org community website.
In so doing, Red Hat is leaving its own content management efforts behind
and embracing the open source Magnolia content management system.
In choosing to use Magnolia, Red Hat took the same path that many open
source customers do: They simply downloaded the application and tried it out
for free before ever contacting the vendor.
The move to Magnolia is proof positive that not only is Red Hat an open source vendor, but they’re an open source consumer as well. It could also be a harbinger of a potential new business vertical for Red Hat in the content management space.
“Our core business is really the middleware projects to do with the
application server and enterprise service bus,” JBoss.org leader Mark Newton
told InternetNews.com. “So it’s not really in our interest to build
our own CMS just for our own Web site. We felt we could offer better service
to our community by leveraging the work of another open source CMS.”
Newton noted that previously, JBoss had been working on an in-house
solution that has been the CMS behind JBoss.org. The JBoss.org effort
itself kicked off in April of 2007 as a community site that is intended to help boost collaboration
and participation in JBoss open source projects.
In choosing Magnolia, JBoss.org went through the same kind of exercise
that countless enterprises go through to find a CMS that works for their own
environment. Newton described the process used to find the right CMS as
being a conventional process.
“We started off looking first at wikis, letting the projects update their
own content in a very quick way,” Newton explained. “The problems we found is
once you entered information, it wasn’t really structured and you couldn’t
pull it all together. So although it was very quick, it didn’t add much value.”
With wiki’s not an option, JBoss.org started looking at lightweight
content management systems. When they downloaded and tried out Magnolia,
Newton noted that it became obvious to the JBoss.org team that it was
possible to build a Web site from inside the browser, which for them was a key
requirement.
Newton explained that JBoss.org then created a proof of concept using
Magnolia and posted it internally to let JBoss staffers use it. Only after
going through that exercise and validating it for themselves as the right
solution did Newton take the next step and decide to contact the Magnolia
company to look at support options.
Boris Kraft, chief technical officer at Magnolia, noted that Magnolia is
all open source code and Red Hat understood the concepts behind the
application.
“The first time I talked to Mark Newton he already had everything up and
running in his environment. That was pretty neat,” Kraft told
InternetNews.com.
“Right now, there are some quality assurance issues
from our side and things can get complex at a certain point no matter how
easy you try and keep them. To deploy a large infrastructure like the one
for JBoss there are a lot of levers to try and get things to run optimally
and that’s where we’re helping,” he said.
JBoss might well end up helping Magnolia as well. As an open source
effort Newton commented that if JBoss had any fixes they would certainly
contribute them back to the Magnolia project. Then there are also the
potential business implications.
“Of course it’s in the realm of possibility that we’ll want to reach out
with Magnolia to have a stronger partnership,” Newton said.
