Red Hat has announced the JBoss Open Choice application platform strategy which aims to provide a single environment for deploying a variety of programming models with a common platform, making it easier to develop and deploy applications. The JBoss Open Choice strategy represents Red Hat's response to the expanding and rapidly changing landscape of Java for the enterprise, which is marked by more variety and more choice of programming and deployment models than ever before. At the heart of the JBoss Open Choice strategy is the JBoss Microcontainer, a new application platform architecture that uniquely isolates core enterprise class platform services from the variety of container and framework choices available today. The JBoss Open Choice strategy is intended to enable customers to embrace the latest innovations of the Java community today and represent an investment in the future as it will seek to accommodate the next wave of changes to Java for the enterprise.

With JBoss Open Choice, Red Hat plans to provide application developers with the ability to choose the framework, language and programming technologies that best fit the application requirements they are trying to achieve without sacrificing reliability, availability, scalability or manageability across their projects. This means JBoss Enterprise Middleware customers will have an opportunity to take advantage of popular programming models such as Spring, Seam, Struts, Google Web Toolkit and Java Enterprise Edition across their products and still enjoy uniformity of management and enterprise-class reliability in the platform. The strategy is expected to employ a number of new JBoss application platform products, built on a common architecture and designed to address customers' unique application deployment needs without the complex dependencies of traditional Java EE application server products.

“With an uncertain future and the ever-changing world of Java, the JBoss Open Choice strategy is designed to provide customers with the confidence, to choose the programming and deployment model that works for them without sacrificing performance,” said Craig Muzilla, vice president, Middleware, Red Hat. “Despite all of the market shifts, Red Hat aims to remain a trusted source for valuable and innovative solutions in the Java market.”

The Java language and enterprise programming standards such as Java Enterprise Edition have been extremely successful, reducing middleware redundancy and easing development for enterprises to build and deploy applications. However, the success of Java has also given rise to a variety of alternative programming and deployment approaches. Enterprises now use lightweight servlet containers, OSGi, Java EE and other application platforms along with a myriad of programming approaches, APIs and dynamic languages. Often, each individual business application requires varied operational capabilities for scalability, manageability, high availability and security. This development paradigm has resulted in a highly complex and disruptive application environment packed with multiple application platforms and numerous technologies that make IT operations difficult and inefficient. Furthermore, recent consolidation in the Java industry has created greater uncertainty and technical fragmentation of the application server market.

Red Hat has developed the JBoss Open Choice strategy in an effort to address the new, dynamic nature of the Java market and to provide the next generation of application server platforms. The JBoss Open Choice strategy aims to provide a common application platform supporting various current and future programming styles and enabling different deployment models. The technology behind the JBoss Open Choice strategy is designed to support models such as Plain Old Java Objects, Java EE, Spring Framework, OSGi and a variety of Rich Internet Application frameworks. The flexible platform is intended to enable enterprises to separate core enterprise services such as persistence, caching and clustering, making the operational footprint simpler and easing development and deployment. All of these capabilities are expected to be available through a common core which will streamline the management of these varied environments.