Red Hat Drives Future Use of Java For The Enterprise With JBoss Open Choice Strategy

JBoss strategy to offer Java application platform architecture focused on preserving customerchoice by supporting a broad range of application programming and deployment models

Malaysia – June 2, 2009 – Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions,today announced the JBoss Open Choice application platform strategy which aims to provide a singleenvironment for deploying a variety of programming models with a common platform, making it easier todevelop and deploy applications. The JBoss Open Choice strategy represents Red Hat's response to theexpanding and rapidly changing landscape of Java for the enterprise, which is marked by more variety andmore choice of programming and deployment models than ever before.

At the heart of the JBoss Open Choice strategy is the JBoss Microcontainer, a new application platformarchitecture that uniquely isolates core enterprise class platform services from the variety of container andframework choices available today. The JBoss Open Choice strategy is intended to enable customers toembrace the latest innovations of the Java community today and represent an investment in the future asit will seek to accommodate the next wave of changes to Java for the enterprise.

With JBoss Open Choice, Red Hat plans to provide application developers with the ability to choose theframework, language and programming technologies that best fit the application requirements they aretrying to achieve without sacrificing reliability, availability, scalability or manageability across their projects.This means JBoss Enterprise Middleware customers will have an opportunity to take advantage of popularprogramming models such as Spring, Seam, Struts, Google Web Toolkit and Java Enterprise Edition acrosstheir products and still enjoy uniformity of management and enterprise-class reliability in the platform. Thestrategy is expected to employ a number of new JBoss application platform products, built on a commonarchitecture and designed to address customers' unique application deployment needs without thecomplex dependencies of traditional Java EE application server products.

“With an uncertain future and the ever-changing world of Java, the JBoss Open Choice strategy is designedto provide customers with the confidence, to choose the programming and deployment model that worksfor them without sacrificing performance,” said Craig Muzilla, vice president, Middleware, Red Hat.“Despite all of the market shifts, Red Hat aims to remain a trusted source for valuable and innovativesolutions in the Java market.”

The Java language and enterprise programming standards such as Java Enterprise Edition have beenextremely successful, reducing middleware redundancy and easing development for enterprises to buildand deploy applications. However, the success of Java has also given rise to a variety of alternativeprogramming and deployment approaches. Enterprises now use lightweight servlet containers, OSGi, JavaEE and other application platforms along with a myriad of programming approaches, APIs and dynamiclanguages. Often, each individual business application requires varied operational capabilities forscalability, manageability, high availability and security. This development paradigm has resulted in a highlycomplex and disruptive application environment packed with multiple application platforms and numeroustechnologies that make IT operations difficult and inefficient. Furthermore, recent consolidation in the Javaindustry has created greater uncertainty and technical fragmentation of the application server market.

Red Hat has developed the JBoss Open Choice strategy in an effort to address the new, dynamic nature ofthe Java market and to provide the next generation of application server platforms. The JBoss Open Choicestrategy aims to provide a common application platform supporting various current and futureprogramming styles and enabling different deployment models. The technology behind the JBoss OpenChoice strategy is designed to support models such as Plain Old Java Objects, Java EE, Spring Framework,OSGi and a variety of Rich Internet Application frameworks. The flexible platform is intended to enableenterprises to separate core enterprise services such as persistence, caching and clustering, making theoperational footprint simpler and easing development and deployment. All of these capabilities areexpected to be available through a common core which will streamline the management of these variedenvironments.

Central to the JBoss Open Choice strategy is an innovative new application server architecture consisting ofthe JBoss Microcontainer. The competitive advantage of the new JBoss Microcontainer is that the coreapplication platform can be reduced and separated from enterprise services and programming APIs. Thisseparation of core platform from services provides a constant operational core that isolates users fromchanges and evolutions in programming styles while maintaining a single operational footprint formanageability. The JBoss Open Choice strategy is intended to:

• Make it easier to develop and deploy applications – now and in the future.
• Encourage developer choice while providing a single environment for consistent deployment andmanagement.
• Provide the cost-saving value and flexibility of open source, while providing trust of support androbust deployment.

The JBoss Open Choice strategy follows trends identified by leading industry analysts. Forrester Researchanalysts John R. Rymer, Dave West and Mike Gilpin advised: “Optimize deployments for the application. Ifyour application requires only J2EE Servlets, don't deploy it on a full J2EE server…deploy only the runtimeservices needed to support your applications; sticking to the necessities will hold down costs, reduce yourexposure to risk in an upgrade, and ease administration and operational management." (Lean Software isAgile, Fit-to-Purpose, and Efficient,” Forrester Research, Inc., Dec. 12, 2008)

Enterprise IT organizations require a stable and constant platform that can easily adapt to these dynamicmarket changes, without disruption. For traditional proprietary Java application servers, adopting theseever-changing programming models have typically introduced additional complexity and disruption;traditional closed-sourced platforms were simply never designed to deal with this level of flexibility.

With JBoss Open Choice, Red Hat seeks to provide an open source platform that can support the full rangeof popular programming models and deployment paradigms. Red Hat customers are expected to benefitfrom this strategy through reduced complexity and increased flexibility in their application developmentand deployment environments.

The JBoss Open Choice strategy is a key part of the overall JBoss mission to provide a comprehensiveportfolio of open source middleware products to service all of an enterprise’s application deployment andintegration needs. JBoss Enterprise Middleware from Red Hat is the market’s only open source middlewarereference architecture, providing opportunities for cost reduction and enhanced flexibility.

To learn more about this announcement, watch the replay of Red Hat's JBoss Open Choice strategy pressconference: http://www.thomsonwebcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=6fc5972edbe15888446210b29e5af5e8&portal_id=af9b227bf07c733390c2738ee0330646
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