Open Source Weblog

...Red Hat said the strategy involves expanding the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio, growing the partner ecosystem, sponsoring new projects in the open source community and introducing new resources to “ensure enterprise-class performance and interoperability”.

Craig Muzilla, vice president, Middleware Business at Red Hat explained, "We are now focused on expanding further into the enterprise with a comprehensive, open source middleware portfolio and programs to ensure confidence and success of mission-critical applications."

The firm said many enterprises are dissatisfied with what it called “inflexible, monolithic and low-value proprietary middleware offerings”. I think we know who they are talking about. Apparently lots of customers want to “expand the value they've experienced with open source infrastructure and application servers such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.”

“Subsequently, many enterprises are now establishing comprehensive open source middleware reference architectures to deliver the applications and services that their businesses demand, at a rapid pace and within a cost structure that allows them to scale their business, not just their infrastructure,” Red Hat said.

The firm backed up the plans with a glowing testimony from an existing client – with added gravitas thanks to the fact it’s the Swedish Police.

“Our initial project with JBoss Enterprise Middleware has been such a resounding success,” said Per-Ola Sjöswärd, executive IT strategist at the Swedish National Police Board, “in terms of meeting our performance requirements and the level of professional support we received from JBoss that the Swedish Police Board is planning on migrating a further four large IT systems to the open source architecture in 2008, of which JBoss Enterprise Middleware is a key part, with another 15 new projects in the pipeline."

“Wahoo!” said the JBoss sales representative selling to the Swedish police. They might have done, anyway. “Boo!” said IBM’s head of software Steve Mills, or at least he may well have done.

Anyway the Enterprise Acceleration initiative consists of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware stack, which the firm said it is expanding to include the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform. It’s also saying it will introduce new community projects that are expected to become future JBoss Enterprise Middleware platforms or platform components.

It talked a bit about its platform, frameworks, maintenance, testing and certification, but none of that looks particularly new. What will be new though is a resource center for Enterprise Acceleration to, “help accelerate the transition to next-generation, open source middleware architectures required to deliver applications and services, at a rapid pace and within a cost structure that enables IT to scale their business, not just their infrastructure.”

It will include a performance tuning lab, live certification center for ISVs and customers to test their applications, and a migration lab for processes, partners, services and best practices to move from rival software to JBoss. Red Hat said the new Enterprise Acceleration Center also will also benefit its partner ecosystem by helping them speed their JBoss middleware customer implementations.

The long and short: Red Hat wants half the enterprise middleware market by 2015 and it sees its partner ecosystem as just as crucial as its technology for it to achieve that.