Red Hat has updated its middleware portfolio with JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 5.0 that it says can provide improved web services and cloud integration. Red Hat's aim with the new release is to create a comprehensive platform designed to integrate applications, services, transactions and business process components into an architecture for automating business and IT processes. Along with the package, the company says customers get updated enterprise service bus with enhanced protocol listeners, management consoles and a rules engine that can be managed by JBoss BRMS (business rules management system).
The new release includes scalable clustering, JEE technologies and a highly customisable base to meet ever-changing enterprise needs. The platform combines SOA, enterprise application integration (EAI), business process and rule management (BPRM) and event-driven architecture (EDA) technologies to integrate services and applications and automate business processes for improved business productivity. The developer tools offering comes with JBoss Developer Studio 5.0, to enable development of interactive applications and services built on the Eclipse 3.5 platform.
"Both of these platforms add new and critical capabilities to the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio and help to form a broad range of open source middleware reference architecture which enables organizations to address their application development, deployment and integration needs," said Craig Muzilla, vice president of middleware at Red Hat, in a statement released by the company.
The GPL means anyone can download it for free and that other vendors can also sell support, and likely will, if the product is anything like as successful as Red Hat hopes.
To expand the use of these cloud-based applications and services, the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform is designed to integrate applications and services in cloud and on-premise deployments allowing enterprises to further optimize their IT infrastructure cost and flexibility. Cloud-based IT has the potential to further increase business process automation productivity when integrated into value chains with a service-oriented architecture.
"Application development within the SOA-equipped enterprise has evolved significantly over the past two years, demanding a more eclectic and flexible arsenal of expertise and matching tools," said Brad Shimmin, Principal Analyst Application Infrastructure at Current Analysis. "Services and their underlying data must be considered together, as do cloud and premise deployments, as do rich internet applications and complex integrated services. JBoss Developer Studio 3.0 melds these disparate concerns using the agility of the Eclipse 3.5 platform and a broad quiver of supported frameworks that includes RichFaces, Seam, Spring, Struts and GWT."