Red Hat has delivered on its JBoss Open Choice strategy and announced availability of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0. This core middleware product represents next generation Java application platforms and will be integral to Red Hat's cloud foundation.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 supports developer choice and aims to provide a consistent foundation to support the wide variety of Java programming and component models, including Plain Old Java Objects, Java EE, Spring Framework, OSGi, Google Web Toolkit and a variety of Rich Internet Application frameworks and dynamic languages. Additionally, the platform spans the growing number of operating models, from traditional on-premise lightweight Java applications, to newer internal and external cloud-based deployments. Customers are expected to benefit from easier application development and deployment, developer choice in programming models, protection against programming model changes and an easier transition to newer application deployment models.

"JBoss Enterprise Middleware allows us to be extremely flexible with our architecture. We can deploy on a range of options to suit our needs which is unlike any other IT vendor we have considered," said Tim Dion, CIO, Sensei Inc., a developer of innovative mobile and Web-based solutions that motivate and empower consumers to take charge of their well-being(www.sensei.com). "With the addition of cloud enabled platforms Red Hat is anticipating our technology needs for the future which will help us make a seamless transition into cloud computing environments. Healthcare innovation, and the role mobile technology is playing in particular, is transforming individuals and organizations. Cloud computing environments like JBoss help bring these innovations to the masses."

Recent IDC research predicts spending on IT cloud services to grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012 and capturing 25% of IT spending growth in 2012 and nearly a third of growth the following year*. Further IDC indicates that successful suppliers will need to address both the biggest challenges of cloud services, and the biggest traditional IT user issues.**

“Not only have we delivered on our JBoss Open Choice strategy by releasing JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0, but 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.”

Red Hat's middleware portfolio is designed to help customers take advantage of cloud computing. As a core component of Red Hat's cloud computing foundation, customers should be able to combine JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux with integrated virtualization technologies that provide customers with a fully virtualized, standards-based enterprise open source cloud computing service platform, supporting both on-premise and off-premise cloud deployments.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is the first commercially available Java EE application server available in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). This new release is expected to also be made available on Amazon EC2, as well as other environments that achieve Red Hat's Premier Cloud Provider Certification.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 is designed to leverage a second generation service-based Microcontainer architecture to provide a consistent and modular series of enterprise deployment features for clustering, caching, transactions, web services, security and more, regardless of the selected programming model or deployment style. This unique JBoss Microcontainer architecture makes it possible for JBoss solutions to support many different programming models. It also makes it possible to separate enterprise services to be more configurable, which enables easier development and deployment. The new release also features an advanced administrative console that makes configuring traditional and cloud-based application grids simpler and easier.

Features of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 include:

• Second-generation service-based architecture: The core JBoss Microcontainer provides improved class-loading, performance, life-cycle management and flexibility across a wide variety of programming and component models including; Java EE, POJOs, OSGi, Spring Framework and more in both traditional on-premise and cloud operating environments. The Microcontainer also provides the ability to separate enterprise services from the core runtime engine, making it more configurable.
• Improved management and configuration: An embedded version of the JBoss Operations Network administrative console provides a comprehensive interface to manage and configure applications, control application server operations and provide insight into performance metrics for both on and off premise applications.
• Java EE Support: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform supports the full Java EE 5 standard, as well as providing support for several upcoming Java EE 6 standards, including the Java EE Web Profile concept.
• Major component upgrades: Upgrades include enterprise versions of the JBoss Application Server, Hibernate, Seam, JBoss Cache and JBoss Web Services that provide performance enhancements for scalability, high availability and intelligent load balancing across a variety of deployment environments. The new release also features support for distributed transactions and comprehensive web services stack support.

Operational management is available in the latest JBoss Operations Network (ON) release, JBoss ON 2.3. This release provides comprehensive management support including configuring application clusters in traditional and cloud-based deployments as well as availability and performance management across a variety of operating environments.

Developer tooling is available with JBoss Developer Studio, an Eclipse-based integrated development environment that provides a comprehensive set of tools developers need to quickly build rich, highly interactive applications and services using technologies like Seam, Java EE, Spring, Hibernate, AJAX, RichFaces and more.