Red Hat takes JBoss further into the cloud

In an announcement at Red Hat Summit JBoss World, the company's annual user conference in Chicago on Tuesday, Red Hat announced the availability of the latest platform from its middleware division JBoss and provided details of its focus on internal and public cloud based application development.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 will support a variety of Java programming models such as Java EE, Spring Framework and OSGi as well as Google Web Toolkit and Rich Internet Application Frameworks, according to the company.

"We are contributing to the future of Java application platforms from traditional to cloud-based environments," said Craig Muzilla, vice president, middleware, Red Hat. "Ultimately, we aim to give customers the flexibility to choose the right programming and deployment models to stay ahead of their competition."

In a statement, the company cited figures from IDC which estimate that spending on hosted IT services are set to grow to around US$42 billion by 2012.

Speaking to ZDNet Asia's sister site CNET News.com last year Red Hat's recently appointed chief executive Jim Whitehurst said that he sees cloud computing as a priority for his company. "The clouds will all run Linux," he said.

Red Hat acquired JBoss in April 2006 for around 200 million pounds (US$324.9 million), and has since been integrating its middleware products with the company's core Linux systems. In May 2008, Red Hat acquired systems integrator Amentra to create a consulting division around JBoss' middleware, and this year has seen the first merging of JBoss' and Red Hat's annual developer events.

"By co-locating Summit and JBoss World this year, we're giving you access to two events for one registration price," the organizers stated on the JBoss event's homepage.

The future of Java as a core middleware technology has been under the spotlight since Oracle announced it was acquiring Sun Microsystems, Java's chief instigator. Commenting on rumors at a session at the recent JavaOne event in San Francisco, Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison joked with Sun chairman Scott McNealy that he "had read about Java in the newspaper" but later said that his company's middleware strategy was "based 100 percent on Java".