Red Hat (News - Alert), a provider of open source solutions, has announced an “Enterprise Acceleration” initiative designed to help its enterprise customers accelerate their transition to a next-generation, open source middleware architecture based on JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

 

The strategy will focus on 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, according to Red Hat officials.

 

Officials explained that the core of Enterprise Acceleration is JBoss Enterprise Middleware, a comprehensive portfolio of open source, Java-based middleware products for developing and hosting applications and services, aggregating and presenting content, integrating data and integrating and orchestrating services within SOA.

 

JBoss Enterprise Platforms include the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform and MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform. Officials pointed out that to accelerate the ongoing adoption of open source middleware their company is expanding its portfolio to include the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform.

 

Claiming that JBoss is already well-established in the developer community and has gained significant corporate adoption, Craig Muzilla, vice president of middleware business at Red Hat, said in a statement, “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.”

 

Per-Ola Sjöswärd, executive IT strategist at the Swedish National Police Board, said that his organization’s initial project with JBoss Enterprise Middleware has been a “resounding success in terms of meeting performance requirements and the level of professional support received from JBoss.”

 

He also said 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.

 

Anthony Gold (News - Alert), vice president and general manager of the Open Source Business at Unisys, commented, “Unisys’ ongoing relationship with JBoss ensures that our enterprise customers can implement cost-effective and customizable solutions with the confidence that JBoss support provides.”

 

Indicating that Vivat has established a core base of Fortune 1000 customers, and they are standardizing on the JBoss portfolio to meet the demands of their enterprise customers, Max Yankelevich, chief architect at Vivat, stated, “The demand for open source is clear: We are betting on open source to build our business, and our customers are betting on open source to drive down costs in middleware.”

 

Red Hat is also creating a resource center for Enterprise Acceleration to help accelerate the transition to next-generation, open source middleware architectures required to deliver applications and services.