JBoss Open Choice, Part 1 – JBoss Enterprise Web Server

Posted on 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 :

Most often use Java EE containers

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 by Rich Sharples

jboss-exo

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

Final thoughts on JavaOne 2009

Posted on 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 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.

j2ee-spring1

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 :

spring-struts

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.

spring

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.

New – JBoss MASS – Migration Analysis Tool

Posted on by Rich Sharples

jbossmass_logo_450px

It’s been just over 3 months since we created the JBoss MASS project and today we’re announcing the first major code contribution – The Migration Analysis Tool (MAT) was created by Mitch Mocle and team at Middleware Connections. The tool is used as a starting point for estimating the effort required to migrate a group of J2EE applications  from an Oracle/BEA WebLogic environment to a JBoss AS / JBoss EAP environment.

The tool produces detailed HTML reports covering Server Configuration, Deployed Applications and Class Dependencies. Read More on the MAT sub-project page.

This is an important first step. The goal of JBoss MASS is to provide a common place to develop tools for migrating to JBoss – if you have or are thinking of developing such a tool and think that Open Source collaboration might be a good way to enhance and maintain the technology – get in touch.

Tab Sweep : JBoss Mostly

Posted on by Rich Sharples

Over the last ten years – every year has been proclaimed the year that Java dies. And every year people are proven wrong and I think that will continue to happen for another 20 or 30 years. To put it into perspective COBOL, another fairly sucessful language is 50 (fifty) years old this month. Other popular langauges : C – 37 years old, C++ – 26 years old, Java – a mere 14 years old. People are still running and maintaining COBOL, ditto C, C++, etc. These popular languages have taken decades to reach mainstream adoption and will be viable for decades to come.

JBoss AS 5.1 GA has been released. Downloads are looking pretty healthy and it’s good to see almost monthly releases now that the MC / re-architecture work is behind us. Release early, release often …

It’s Java One time again, JBoss’ presence this year will probably be larger than last year – we have a lot to talk about and show – so swing by our sessions, our booths and join us at the JBoss Party. See you there – and follow @JBossNews on twitter for the latest Java One updates.

Sun seem to be getting increasingly desperate to build a business around their Java middleware – they’re attacking companies a fraction of a fraction of their size and continuing the fire sale. It’s going to be really interesting when Sun product lines get hit with Larry Ellison’s “fiduciary responsibility” stick. Weblogic wasn’t exactly cheap – and Oracle had to pile on a pretty hefty Tax to bring it in line with Oracle’s cost model. The disparity between Sun and Oracle pricing is *huge* and is going to require something more dramatic than a a mere 30% price increase.

Although Java One hasn’t started yet – for all the folks involved in planning and preparing – the work is (or should be) done. At Red Hat we already have our sight on the biggest Red Hat / JBoss event of the year – the co-located Red Hat Summit and JBoss World 2009 which is in Chicago, Septemer 1st to 4th.

Truth happens

Posted on by Rich Sharples

If you wander around any of Red Hat’s offices you might see this quote from Mahatma Gandhi :

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Or you may have seen this (exceptionally cool) video at one of our conferences :

Of course Gandhi wasn’t talking about JBoss or Red Hat or Open Source – but the quote is still very relevant to a company that has revolutionized the software industry. People and companies who once ignored or laughed at Linux, or JBoss’ original EJB server are now waking up to the reality that they are losing.

Given the recent presentations that JBoss’ only real competitors (IBM and Oracle) have been spreading around and the amount of work and energy they’re both expending to compete with JBoss – I think JBoss has reached a significant milestone – I think we’re at stage 3 of Gandhi’s steps to oppose the truth  – ” … then they fight you …”.

It’s flattering and inspiring to know that two companies who are literally hundreds of times the size of Red Hat are worried. Really worried. It also adds a huge amount of credibility to our business model and our technology.

What’s next ?

Tab Sweep : JBoss

Posted on by Rich Sharples

Another couple of super-busy months here at JBoss. If anything the pace of new releases and new projects is increasing. Here are some of the more prominent Community announcements I managed to bookmark :

JBoss App Server 5.1.0 CR1 – 5.1 is a pretty big milestone – it includes the new Jopr powered embedded console  – something you’ll like but also something we really need some early feedback on. Also a preview of Web Beans / JSR-299. [release notes, downloads]

Data Integration goes Open Source – I missed the launch of the Teiid Project you can find out more on the project page.

This has been brewing for a while and Manik has finally announced Infinispan – I predict that this is going to  be a pretty disruptive technology. [home page, quick guide]

JBoss Tattletale is a new tool that will analyze your code and produce detailed dependency reports – for example highlighting duplicate jars / classes, missing jars / classes, etc. [downloads, project]

The latest release of Jopr (2.2) is out – Jopr is the upstream project for JBoss Operations Network (see below). There are a shedload of UI enhancements, support for JBoss EWS and Performance improvements among other things.

Also a nice article on JBoss Cloud over on DZone.

On the JBoss Enterprise side of the house :

JBoss Operations Network 2.2 is out and JON receives a pretty decent makeover (see Greg’s post on some of the major enhancements) – product page is here.

One of the new capabilities of JON 2.2 is support for JBoss Enterprise Web Server (EWS) which was also released a few weeks ago – more on that in a future post.

If you’re currently stuck with Oracle Weblogic or IBM Websphere and need help getting off – here’s an opportunity you can’t ignore.

Sorry for the length of this post – I need to do this more frequently. The next couple of months are going to be even more hectic and you can follow the @JBossNews via Twitter. Finally, something from the happy news files – we’re still hiring.

The best $1200 you could spend this year

Posted on by Rich Sharples

Unsurprisingly and from what I’ve seen personally – tech. conference attendance is a little light this year. But if you have some budget for attending tech. conferences – I think the combined JBoss World / Red Hat Summit (Chicago, Sept 1st-4th) could be just about the best investment you make this year.

You’ll learn about all the great tech. that Red Hat and JBoss will be shipping as well as some of the technology still in the labs. But most of all you’ll learn how Red Hat can save you and your organization money – and right now that’s got to be a smart investment.

* travel and accomodation extra

Tab Sweep : JBoss

Posted on by Rich Sharples

JBoss adding muscle to Apache CXF. We’ll be increasing our commitment to Apache CXF – in term of both resource and expertise and fully support CXF in future versions of our products. More from Alessio Saldano (JBoss WS Lead), Dan Kulp (PMC Chair for CXF) and Sacha (JBoss CTO).

Talking of Sacha – he’s just announced he’ll be leaving Red Hat. Sacha interviewed me when I joined Red Hat (just under a year ago) and I’ve enjoyed working with him – super-smart, very passionate and a genuinely nice guy – a rare combination. Good luck for the future Sacha and enjoy the break – after 8 years you deserve some R&R and time with with your family.

The JBoss Tools team delivered another major release – JBDS 2.0 and we also introduced JBDS – Portfolio Edition – which included the run-times for all the new features in JBDS 2.0.

JBoss continues to slash costs – two more customer success stories, first Covad (provider of data, voice and wireless telecommunications) who moved to JBoss from “inflexible and costly proprietary middleware software” because “That’s why we love JBoss– it allows us to do more with less,”.

IWBank (online banking and financial services) of Milan also selected JBoss because “JBoss enables us to provide more and more efficient and affordable services, which is crucial in the current economic climate”.

Finally, JBoss will be a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) – you’ll have the chance to work with some of the smartest, most exerienced Open Source developers in the business. Head over to JBoss wiki if you are interested.