JBoss and Microsoft announced on September 27, 2005 that the two companies
would work together to enhance interoperability between JEMS and Microsoft Windows Server
products. Please click here for the complete press release.
Shaun Connolly, Vice President of Product Management for JBoss Inc., sat down recently
to answer some questions about this announcement. Below is the transcript:
Question: What are you announcing?
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Answer: Microsoft and JBoss are announcing our intentions
to work together on enhancing the interoperability between the JBoss Enterprise
Middleware System (JEMS) products and the Microsoft Windows Server products.
In support of this vision, we have outlined areas of technology engagement
that we will work on together over the coming year for the benefit of Microsoft
and JBoss customers.
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Question: What exactly will this partnership
entail from an interoperability standpoint?
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Answer: In order to address the needs of our joint customers,
JBoss and Microsoft have identified four key technology areas that we can
focus on over the coming twelve months. These areas include:
- Security Interoperability
- Web Services Interoperability
- Manageability of JEMS environments using Microsoft Operations Manager
- Optimized use of SQL Server for users of Hibernate and EJB 3.0
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Question: What is your timeline for showing
results from the partnership?
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Answer: This announcement is meant to communicate our
general intent to work together and to outline the areas of initial collaboration.
Our next step will be to put detailed plans in place and begin working these plans.
We will communicate the results of our efforts periodically over the course
of the coming year.
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Question: Is this a signal of future increased
cooperation between the two companies? If so in what form?
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Answer: Yes, we are excited about future opportunities
for our companies to work more closely together. The two companies have agreed
that we will work together to explore new opportunities that improve
collaboration between our technical teams.
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Question: How would you now characterize
the relationship between Microsoft and JBoss?
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Answer: This marks a new era in the relationship between
the two companies based on a constructive collaboration and a healthy
competition that benefits costumers and the industry.
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Question: Why are you working together?
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Answer: While Microsoft and JBoss compete vigorously
with .Net and Java, we also share a large footprint of installed users who
run JEMS on Microsoft Windows. Our partnership is tightly focused on addressing
the needs of that large user community and boosting customer satisfaction
levels in these environments.
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Question: Is Microsoft changing its position on open source software?
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Answer: The optimal environment for innovation is the coexistence of
OSS and commercial software within the greater software ecosystem. This ecosystem has sustained
innovation for decades through an ongoing cycle of interactions among organizations and individuals
working with software. Both commercial software and OSS offer specific advantages, and several
development models can and should coexist in healthy competition.
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Question: Isn't this a conflict of interest
for both companies? How will it impact Java?
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Answer: No it is not. Microsoft remains 100% focused
on .Net as its strategic development platform. Microsoft is not promoting
Java as a platform of choice in this announcement.
From a JBoss perspective, we have and will continue to drive innovation in Java.
JBoss is an active participant in the Java Community Process (JCP). We hold a
seat on the Executive Committee for the Standard/Enterprise Edition (SE/EE) and
have made significant contributions specifications such as EJB 3.0 (JSR-220) and
Java Business Integration (JSR-208). Our alliance with Microsoft simply recognizes
the reality that enterprise IT shops are heterogeneous in the platforms they use
and that these customers require that Microsoft and JBoss work together to ensure
they obtain maximum value from their existing investments.
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Question: Is JBoss positioning Microsoft
as its preferred Operating System vendor of choice?
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Answer: Our alliance is designed to better serve mutual
customers while preserving choice. Since the JEMS platform is 100% Java, it
is deployed across a wide range of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows,
Linux, Solaris, etc. Microsoft Windows is used, for either development or
production use, within almost half of the JBoss user base. It only makes sense
for us to work together on ensuring the customers are best served in these scenarios.
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Question: Is Microsoft positioning JBoss
as its Enterprise Java platform vendor of choice?
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Answer: Microsoft and JBoss will continue to compete
vigorously in the .Net and Java market. Our alliance is not meant to communicate
Microsoft's preference for or embracement of Java. Microsoft is simply
recognizing the fact that JBoss is the fastest growing vendor and driving force
of consolidation in the Java market and that working together on
interoperability makes sense for our customers. Our alliance is entirely
focused on better serving our mutual customers while preserving choice.
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Question: Is JBoss moving away from the
Linux community?
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Answer: No we are not. JBoss finds that Linux is used,
for either development or production use, by as many of our customers as
Microsoft Windows. JBoss has a strong, strategic relationship with Novell and
its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server team to ensure we jointly serve those customers.
JBoss also has many customers who run our products on Red Hat, and our partners like Dell, HP, Intel, NEC,
Sun and Unisys all provide support for JBoss across a variety of platforms
including Linux. Finally, JBoss has a strong affinity for Linux, in general,
since it has played a major role in bringing open source software products
into mainstream Enterprise IT shops.
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Question: Is JBoss selling out the open
source community?
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Answer: JBoss was founded in the open source community.
Open source is our lifeblood as well as our livelihood. JEMS is a free and
open source middleware platform. This announcement does not change those facts.
As the leaders of the Professional Open Source movement, JBoss is focused on
making sure JEMS remains a safe choice for our Enterprise IT customers, our
partners, and our open source community. Our alliance with Microsoft will
help achieve that mission.
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Question: Can you provide more details on your
joint efforts on Web Services Interoperability?
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Answer: Microsoft is a major contributor to many Web
Services specification efforts. JBoss feels that the Web Services Interoperability
Organization (ws-i.org) provides a pragmatic structure around the various Web
Services specifications that have been developed and are emerging. We expect our
initial discussions to focus on the WS-I Basic Profile and work towards ensuring
our technologies interoperate on this front. Additional discussions will
likely branch out to include other Web Services specifications such as Business
Process Execution Language (BPEL).
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Question: Can you provide more details on
your joint efforts on Security Interoperability?
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Answer: Our efforts in this area will likely focus on interoperability
of Active Directory with JEMS-based applications, specifically in the areas
of integrated sign on and federated identity. There are improvements we can
collaborate on that can immediately improve how JBoss Application Server
interacts with Active Directory. On the Web Services front, the WS-I Basic
Security Profile provides a framework for working together on dealing with
transport security, SOAP messaging security and other WS-I Basic-Profile-oriented
Web services security considerations.
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Question: Can you provide more details
on managing JEMS with Microsoft Operations Manager?
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Answer: Our efforts in this area will likely focus on the creation
of a Microsoft Operations Manager Management Pack for JBoss.
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Question: Can you provide more details
on optimizing SQL for use with JEMS?
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Answer: This work will likely be focused on optimizing the
experience of JBoss users who use Hibernate and EJB3 for interacting with
Microsoft SQL Server databases. The effort is mostly around JDBC driver
tuning as well as making sure Hibernate, for example, is taking advantage
of any SQL Server specific optimizations that will enable customer applications
to perform better or scale farther.
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