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Tab Sweep : JBoss World 2009

Posted on August 12, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

JBoss World 2009 is just under 3 weeks away and it’s still not too late to register. GEICO CIO Jess Reed will be one of the keynotes this year underlining that JBoss World is a great place to come and learn how other organizations just like you have saved money and improved performance and stability by moving to JBoss and Red Hat.

“GEICO is the 3rd largest passenger auto-insurer in the US and provides coverage for 9 million policyholders.”

“Reed will highlight GEICO’s deployment of Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware and their use of open source middleware software for mission critical platforms”

You can even save money ($400) on saving money by registering before the event.

I’ll be at Red Hat Summit / JBoss World all week and have a couple of sessions talking about JBoss Enterprise App. Platform both present and future. If you’re around and want to chat – get in touch.

OpenJDK and Red Hat

Posted on August 6, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

Here’s an interview I did for DZone a while back about Red Hat’s involvement with OpenJDK.

Some additional useful links :

OpenJDK project
IcedTea project
IcedTea history
Gary Benson’s Blog
Andrew Hughes’ Blog
Andrew Haley’s Blog
Lillian Angel’s Blog
Mark Wielaard’s Blog

Bugs

Posted on August 3, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

I’m still amazed by the diversity of wildlife we see in North Carolina (and previously in California). I seem to remember very little about English wildlife other than Hedgehogs, Crows and the occasional Fox and numerous brown and grey bugs. Contrast that two these two colorful critters spotted in the last few days. The first are a pair (male and female) of Black and Yellow Garden Spiders – named for their Black and Yellowness and their location in the Garden no doubt.

The pictures are a bit crap as I had to poke my arm through the undergrowth and click.

The next encounter was a bit further a-field – North Topsail Beach to precise. This stunning Yellow Io Moth wanted to hitch a ride home with us. A bit of prodding made her open her wings before we put her safely on the ground.

Migrating to JBoss

Posted on July 27, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

An increasing amount of the bigger deals I see at JBoss come at the expense of our competitors like Oracle and IBM. Technology decisions that were made 5, 6 or 7 years ago are being reviewed and JBoss is the clear alternative

If you are looking to migrate from Weblogic or Websphere we have a growing list of migration success stories including :

KLM / Air France expect to save 11 million Euros by moving from Websphere and AIX to Red Hat and JBoss

Education Testing Services (ETS) reduced costs and boosted competitiveness by moving from Websphere and Solaris to Red Hat and JBoss.

Avis Rental Cars reduced TCO and increased flexibility by moving from Solaris and Weblogic to JBoss and Red Hat

JBoss EAP 4.3 Achieves Security Certification

Posted on July 6, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

A few weeks back JBoss Enterprise App. Platform 4.3 achieved Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 2+ – here’s the press release and here’s the evaluators updated page.

Common Criteria Evaluation is an internationally recognized standard that defines a framework for computer systems users to specify security requirements; for vendors to implement them and for third-party evaluators to test them. The Evaluation process ensures that this is all carried out in a consistent, formalized and standard way.

The Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) describes the “depth and rigour” of the evaluation not necessarily the security hardness. Though products certified at Level 7 (the highest) are likely to be deployed more demanding and secure environments than a product certified at Level 1 (the lowest). EAL 2+ means the products have been evaluated in collaboration with the vendor (eg. to provide development, design and test documentation).

What this means is that customers who care about security (who doesn’t ?) can be assured that JBoss Enterprise App. Platform 4.3 will meet commonly accepted, best practice security requirements. Even outside military and government use, who use Common Criteria as a benchmark, this evaluation should demonstrate Red Hat’s commitment to security. It’s a long and fairly involved process and the costs aren’t insignificant.

This is the first successful evaluation for a JBoss product but the JBoss Data Services Platform is currently in process and we’re already planning for a more stringent evaluation (higher EAL) for JBoss EAP 5.x.

JBoss Open Choice, Part 1 – JBoss Enterprise Web Server

Posted on July 4, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

It’s July 4th and we have an extended weekend in the US which is a good enough excuse to catch up on some blogging; at least until the Strawberry Margaritas start flowing. At Java One this year we announced an initiative called Open Choice which I blogged about previously. Fundamentally Open Choice is about broadening our footprint and giving customers what they want and moves us closer to supporting the whole applications infrastructure tier rather than just parts.

Open Choice isn’t some big, far-into-the-future vision thing it’s something we’re doing now. This year. Product-wise it consists of four offerings (where previously there was only one) and as we release them I’ll give you my perspective on why they’re important. Unfortunately I’m already a little behind – we’ve already delivered two products out of four and the third is in Alpha moving quickly towards Beta.

So let me use this post to talk about JBoss EWS 1.0 (Enterprise Web Server). EWS is basically a packaged, certified and tested bundle of Tomcat and Apache HTTP – the industry’s dominant Java web-container and Web Server respectively. We round out the bundle with mod_jk, APR and most importantly a management agent for JBoss ON. We currently support and certify on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Solaris with Windows coming next.

Providing JBoss ON management support is pretty important – it gives customer the ability to manage the application and web stacks easily and consistently using the same toolset. If you want to learn more – there is a free Webinar on July 14th at 2pm Eastern – more here.

The rationale for supporting Tomcat is that it is absolutely the dominant Java web-container and has become an important part of the corporate IT fabric. Tomcat has been popular for years but in the last two or three I’ve seen it evolve into a much more strategic platform for IT. Many customer I speak with have defined two distinct tiers of functionality – essentially a full Java EE stack and a lighter-weight Tomcat platform. By supporting both the dominant Java EE implementation (JBoss EAP) and Tomcat, combined with the ability to manage from a single tool – I think we can do a much better job of satisfying a much broader customer base than our competition. Here’s an (albeit unscientific) chart from a recent survey that demonstrates this well :

It’s also interesting to note that from this survey JBoss’ deployment share is more than Websphere and Weblogic combined.

OK, so JBoss EWS 1.0 is out and we have customers deployed or deploying some pretty large, strategic apps. but I’m already thinking about the next version (code named Cavalier). Some initial ideas for Cavalier are :

increasing platform support to include AIX, HP-UX and maybe other Linux flavours;
alternative Connection Pool implementations for Tomcat;
looking at a more recent version of Apache HTTPD;
possibly supporting mod_cluster.
soft-appliances to better support virtualized hosts.

Any other thoughts are always welcome – leave a comment or get in touch directly.

JBoss + eXo = Open Source advantage

Posted on June 11, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

This week, we announced a partnership with eXo – creator of the Open Source eXo platform. This strategic agreement allows us to integrate and distribute each others’ technology thus providing a mutual competitive advantage. This is no doubt good for both company’s products but I think the important point is that JBoss is 1. willing to do this and; 2. able to do this.

Taking the first point – “we’re willing to do this”. I think it shows a level of maturity in our organization that stands us apart from some of our Open Source competitors. The realization that not everything needs to be invented here; that there are smart people outside JBoss as well. There’s a tendency – call it NIH Syndrome, Professional Pride – to want to own and control everything; that’s true for every engineering and product company I’ve ever worked for. When taken too far – that can be at add odds with Open Source and diminishes some of its advantage.

Taking the second point further - “we’re able to do this”. Our business model is still pretty unique – we put less value on the bits and more on the whole experience. Control of the technology is less of a competitive advantage than some of our competitors because we have more to offer than the bits.

While proprietary software has some advantages – they’re all based on the premise that your technology is better than your competitors and keeping it hidden maintains some kind of advantage. This can only really be true half the time.

Red Hat has the knowledge and experience that allows us to collaborate, allows us to integrate and support technology that we don’t outright control. We’re also confident in ourselves, our brand and our business strategy – and that allows us to see the act of ‘enriching’ other technology (like Apache, OpenJDK, GWT, eXo, etc.) as a way to grow our footprint, capabilities and potential rather than as a competitive faux-pas.

Update :

Some more info on the agreement from eXo : About The eXo Partnership

Tab Sweep : JBoss

Posted on June 9, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

From the “release early and often” files :

JBoss Messaging 2.0 beta is out. According to JBM lead, Tim Fox – New features include, performance, performance, performance, flexible clustering, seamless high-availability, large message support. See Tim’s announcement for details.

Thomas Diesler has some thoughts on how the JBoss Microcontainer could fully implement the OSGi spec. It will be interesting to see the results of this and it will be a great example of the power and flexibility of the JBoss architecture. JBossOSGi 1.0.0 Beta2 was released last week.

If you are eager to try out Eclipse 3.5 / Galileo and want to explor the upcoming features in JBoss Tools / JBDS you now can – JBoss Tools 3.1.0.M1 is available. See what’s new and noteworthy.

The recently released Seam 2.1.2 includes improved support for JAX-RS (RESTful web services) – more details here.

Finally, we have a free online seminar tomorrow (June 10th) at 9am EDT, 3pm CEST which covers Web Beans (JSR-299 / JCDI – Java Contexts and Dependency Injection). More details here.

Final thoughts on JavaOne 2009

Posted on June 4, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

As expected, JavaOne was interesting. For the first time in 12 years I actually attended more than a couple of sessions; but that isn’t why it was interesting. It was interesting because we witnessed the ceremonial passing of the Java One torch from Sun to Oracle and a fairly public goodbye from Schwartz and McNealy.

By all standards it was a pretty lightly attended Java One – I expected it to be a lot lighter given the economy, the uncertainty around Java and the Bacon Fever – so I was actually pleasantly surprised. Outside of Sun itself – I think JBoss was probably the largest software vendor on the pavilion floor – that says something.

Despite the low attendance overall – we had very solid attendance at our mini-theatre sessions – I think ours was one of the few booths that drew a crowd (without having to give stuff away) – so all in all it was a good show for us.

I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t the the last Java One; and as the crews started dismantling the pavilion – I felt like I should be trying to rip down a sign or banner – some memento to remind me of the fun times I’ve had at Java One over the years.

A lot of people were questioning the future of Java at the show (as usual) but I still firmly believe it’s going to be safe enough for the next 20 or 30 years – more than long enough for most of us. I don’t think Oracle will do anything stupid; though given the size and complexity of Sun I think they’re bound to make mistakes – it’s up to us to tell them when they do and to help resolve them.

As anyone who knows Java One – it’s about the people you meet – not the content. And so it is with Java – it’s about the people / community / ecosystem – at the end of the day – no single company has really owned Java for a long time.

Update : My pictures and Marek Goldmann’s pictures on Flickr.

JBoss Open Choice

Posted on June 4, 2009February 16, 2015 by Rich Sharples

Earlier this week we announced a couple of things. First, a change in our platform strategy, second some new products to implement that strategy. We felt we had to give that strategy a name and “Open Choice”, while unoriginal, best illustrated what we’re doing. And what we’re doing is expanding our support to include Open Source technologies beyond what we’ve typically supported and beyond the JBoss constellation.

This is a reaction to a) customer demand; and b) the realization that not all the cool stuff is created by JBoss. What we’re also doing is reacting to market demand. Java EE, while hugely successful is not the only game in town any more.

We want to ensure that our customers get to choose whatever frameworks, languages, development models they want without causing major disruption for the operations people who have to manage the applications for the other 90% of the application lifecyle (ie. outside development). We also want to remove the risk of deploying new developer oriented tech. by providing a stable, consistent operational footprint (JBoss) to run the resulting apps.

Note – I normally don’t use Job Trends data in isolation to make serious decisions, but it’s convenient and lazy way to find what keywords are trending.

So yes, this is a reactive move; we’re reacting to customer demand and market pressure – we’re really not reacting to anything that Spring Source is doing. I’ll post another blog explaining what we’re including in our Web Framework Kit and why; but Spring Framework is included for much the same reason as struts – they’re mature technologies and both are very widely deployed :

It’s no secret that a big chunk of our business comes from our much larger but less nimble competitors and we have to ensure that migration is a simple and low risk proposition.

As the chart shows (if you have any faith in the data) – Spring Framework usage is fairly evenly distributed across the Java container landscape. By making JBoss a better place to run Spring (among other things) – I believe that we can change this landscape dramatically.

This really isn’t about Spring Source – in fact we don’t even compete with Spring Source. Our sights are set much higher.