Red Hat today unveiled a strategy that will bring the benefits of Open Source software to the web application market. The primary goal of the strategy is to provide a complete infrastructure of core technologies and services for customers deploying web applications in commercial environments. Additionally, it will provide the tools, capabilities and services for software developers to create web applications. With this announcement, Red Hat is reinforcing its strategy of delivering Open Source solutions for the enterprise.
By supporting the development and deployment of standards-based applications on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat will extend the cost, performance and reliability benefits of Open Source software from the operating system to the web application environment. To meet the goals of this strategy, Red Hat will join the ObjectWeb consortium to further develop enterprise technologies such as JOnAS and OpenEJB. Red Hat will also continue its close relationship with the Apache Software Foundation to extend Jakarta capabilities such as Tomcat. These technologies, in combination with open source technologies such as gcj, will be integrated to form a compelling, enterprise-strength, unencumbered open source Web application environment. Red Hat plans to deliver this environment as a fully supported layered product for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux product family, with beta versions being available in 2003. In addition, to enable enhanced web application development capabilities, Red Hat plans to provide and support the open source Eclipse integrated development environment on its Enterprise Linux family of products. Complementary learning and support services will be offered for customers and Open Source developers so that they can maximize the benefits of a Web Application environment.
"As proprietary Unix developers make the move to Linux, Red Hat is welcoming them with solutions and services designed to speed and support their deployment of enterprise applications," said Paul Cormier, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Red Hat. "By joining consortiums and using the strength of the Community, Red Hat plans to help drive innovation into Open Source Web application software such as JOnAS, Jakarta and Eclipse projects. Red Hat is unwavering in its goal to provide the enterprise customer quality with a standards-based solutions."
"Red Hat's ongoing support of the Apache Jakarta Project enables development of robust and scalable open source applications," said Greg Stein, Chairman of the Apache Software Foundation. "Open source projects such as Apache Tomcat have matured into applications that can be relied upon in the enterprise."
The ObjectWeb consortium hosts the JOnAS project which isan open source J2EE implementation. An objective for Red Hat's memebership with the ObjectWeb initiative is to optimize features such as JOnAS for Red Hat Enterprise Linux product family . Downloaded by more than 100,000 people, JOnAS is used on different operating systems in hundreds of operational applications, including e-commerce, e-portal, management systems, intranet applications, document processing, inventory systems, reservation systems, and banking applications.
"Red Hat's expertise with Enterprise Linux solutions is critical in our development of JOnAS ", said Jean-Pierre Laisné, Vice President at ObjectWeb and Bull Open Source Strategist. "Red Hat is a welcome addition to the ObjectWeb consortium as we work to deliver the scalable qualities of Java to the enterprise."
Eclipse will be included in Red Hat's next Enterprise Linux platform releasefor both server and client-side solutions. Eclipse is an open source software development project dedicated to providing a robust, full-featured, commercial-quality set of tools for the development of applications. The Eclipse Platform is an integrated development environment (IDE) that can be used to create applications as diverse as web sites, embedded Java programs, C++ programs, and Enterprise JavaBeans. Eclipse has been deployed on Linux and Red Hat is continuing to enhance a true Open Source Eclipse platform with a set of plugins needed for the Enterprise Linux customers. Red Hat has collaborated with other Eclipse members to provide an integrated Linux set of plugin for the Linux platform such as the CDT, rpm and Tomcat plugins.
"The Eclipse project is helping HP and Red Hat better meet the needs of the enterprise software development community," said Martin Fink. vice president of Linux, HP Enterprise Servers and Storage. "As theapplication portfolio for Enterprise Linux solutions continues to grow, it will accelerate the adoption of Linux platforms and with our enterprise customers."
Also today, Red Hat announced an agreement with BEA Systems to jointly provide an integrated application server solution on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This offers enterprise customers a best-of-breed capability for developing and deploying applications from one of the world's leading commercial software vendors.