Open-source software vendor Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) updated a trio of its JBoss products this week with new SOA, Web server and developer tools.
The open-source software vendor releases SOA Platform 5.0, Enterprise Web Platform 5.0 and JBoss Developer Studio 3.
The new updates include the JBoss SOA Platform 5.0, Enterprise Web Platform 5.0 and JBoss Developer Studio (JBDS) 3.0 releases. At the core of Red Hat’s product updates are features and enhancements that aim to optimize the products and make them more usable.
“The theme of the announcement is giving IT greater productivity, visibility and control,” Pierre Fricke, Red Hat’s JBoss SOA product line director told InternetNews.com. “Developer and administrator productivity have been improved and that’s important from a cost and time-to-market perspective.”
Fricke noted that JBoss Developer Studio 3.0 (JBDS) 3.0 makes it easier to develop and integrate services on the SOA platform. “That’s a key aspect of productivity improvement,” said Fricke.
JBDS is an Eclipse based IDE that Red Hat first released in 2007 after acquiring the technology from software vendor Exadel. Version 2 of JBDS was released a year ago.
Fricke added that JBDS includes enhanced AJAX tools and workflow management as well as the SOA wizards.
With the JBoss SOA Platform 5.0 release, Red Hat is delivering the first major update for the platform since the SOA 4.3 release in 2008. Fricke said SOA 5.0 provides performance improvements, increased security and enhanced monitoring consoles for better visibility into SOA activities.
With SOA 5.0 Red Hat is also providing integration with the JBoss Business Rules Management Suite (BRMS) for additional control.
“This will give you visibility into how well your SOA deployment implements your business rules,” Fricke said. “It makes your IT department more accountable to the business in the sense that IT infrastructure is in fact implementing what is expected for any type of business rule activity.”
Optimized for Cloud Computing
SOA 5.0 is also being optimized for the cloud which is where Fricke noted that some enterprises are starting to leverage SOA deployments.
“We see more people putting applications and Web Services in the cloud,” Fricke said. “Enterprises want to integrate those cloud deployments and integrate with internal on-premise applications and processes and the SOA platform can do that.”
In addition to the new SOA and JBDS releases, Red Hat also announced the general availability of the JBoss Enterprise Web Platform 5.0. Red Hat first announced the Web Platform in June as part of its Open Choice initiative.
JBoss Enterprise Web Platform 5.0 is intended to be a lighter weight Java application server for Web applications that doesn’t provide all the additional services that a full JavaEE application enables.
The move toward lighter-weight Java web servers is one that rivals including VMware’s SpringSource are also moving too with their tc Server.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.