Open Source Blog

Now, I'm not just saying this because I tipped Novell to be the one to snap up JBoss, but to me Novell would have been a more logical fit. As I wrote yesterday, the company already has a strong relationship with JBoss, having ditched its exteNd Application Server in favor of JBoss AS in August 2004. In comparison, Red Hat has previously opted for ObjectWeb's JOnAS project.

More significantly, perhaps, Novell had also contributed code to the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite, donating its Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) portlet container and portlet library to help accelerate the delivery of JBoss Portal to market, while using JEMS as part of its new Identity and Application Services Foundations.

Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss therefore presents Novell with something of a problem, or at least it could. With the deal not yet closed its too early to say how it will pan out, but Red Hat's CEO, Matthew Szulik, has already stated the company intention to work with Novell.

"We look forward to having Novell as a productive partner," he said. Novell has similarly maintained a willingness to work with the combined Red Hat/JBoss:

"We have a contract in place with JBoss and we plan to continue to honor that contract," it said in a statement. "Our approach in helping customers define their Open Enterprise is completely customer driven. We will continue to offer and support the components of the stack that customers request."

The company also noted that it has "partnered with and supported many proprietary and open source alternatives for application servers, including IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, JBoss, Tomcat and Geronimo, to name a few" in the past.

So what does Novell do now? The classic, proprietary software, response would be to acquire or partner with one of the other offerings to give the company an alternative to take to market. This is still an option for the company but in my experience potential customers see this for exactly what it is: a reactionary, defensive move.

Novell needs to articulate a response to Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss (and a better one than that statement) but the fact that the code involved is open source gives the company flexibility, and while it would obviously prefer not to be recommending code owned by its rival, but the open source Java middleware layer Novell considered to be the best available does not suddenly stop being so just because it's owned by Red Hat.

There are plenty of alternatives, however, such as the JOnAS project previously favoured by Red Hat, the various Apache projects, including Geronimo, which forms the foundation of Gluecode, acquired by IBM in May 2005 and released as WebSphere Application Server Community Edition in October of last year (although that one might pitch the company too heavily up against JBoss, given Marc Fleury's dismissal of IBM's strategy).

On the other hand, the acquisition takes Red Hat into more direct competition with the likes of IBM and Oracle, and Novell might well find itself becoming even more attractive to the potential partners as the Red Hat alternative.

Novell can afford to take its time and evaluate the potential alternatives to invest in (either via acquisition or funding) and should in the meantime focus on differentiating itself from Red Hat in other ways. With its GroupWise, ZENworks, and Identity Manager products it offers a mass of functionality that Red Hat is unable to compete with.