| Look out world, here comes Red Hat |
Apr. 10, 2006
Red Hat acquiring JBoss is big news for the open-source world. It may be even bigger news for the entire software world, though.
Red Hat has long been the dominant Linux distributor. Its switch from a retail-box end-user Linux to a subscription-based business distribution made it no friends in the Linux community, but Red Hat's bottom line showed that it's path was a rip-roaring business success.
On the flip side, love him or hate him, JBoss CEO Marc Fleury, with his "professional open source," has made JBoss's J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) server and its associated software -- JEMS (JBoss Enterprise Middleware System) -- the Java-based middleware stack for businesses.
Put them together and you get a company that can challenge Microsoft across the entire server line.
That's not news, in some ways.
Linux owns edge-servers, which provide Web and Internet services. In enterprises, Linux also kicks rump and takes names, with its Samba-based file and print services. In addition, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) servers have long been seen as the low-end for Web services. But, when they wanted serious enterprise services, most businesses have heretofore turned to a Microsoft proprietary stack or to J2EE. Now, Red Hat will be able to offer an integrated software stack that can handle all of a company's server needs.
Microsoft may not be worried about this anytime soon. The boys from Redmond have enough on their hands trying to get Vista out. However, companies like BEA, IBM, Novell, and Sun must be feeling nervous this morning.
While BEA downplays its concerns about JBoss and the other open-source J2EE projects, everyone in the business knows that BEA is concerned that JBoss may eventually rip its business right out from underneath it.
Indeed, IBM was already worried about JBoss. Last fall, IBM released its open-source WAS CE (WebSphere Application Server Community Edition). This J2EE engine is built on the Apache Software Foundation's Geronimo open-source application server, and includes code from its Gluecode Software acquisition. It's purpose? To compete with JBoss.
Novell, the other big Linux company, has long played up its card of having more than just a Linux distribution to offer its customers. For example, it's directory services. And, no question about it, those are important. Unfortunately, I think there's more customers who want an integrated, certified J2EE stack with their distribution than there are ones who want directory services.
All that said, the company that has the most to worry about, from this new marriage of Red Hat and JBoss, is Sun.
Sun has a love/hate relationship with both Linux and with Red Hat in particular. At the heart of the matter is the fact that Sun is simply not doing well.
Last week, Sun announced more layoffs in its SPARC division. Worse still, the company lost $223 million in its latest quarter. With Red Hat eating into its Unix business despite its counter-punching, and JBoss trying to take Sun's J2EE business, a union of the two can only be seen as bad news by Sun's brass.
From where I sit, Red Hat's buying JBoss is good news for all open-source software based businesses. For everyone in the software business though, this move serves notice that a major new power has arisen. Even the biggest of the big software companies will now have to deal with the fact that Linux and open-source isn't joining the IT mainstream, it's becoming the IT mainstream.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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