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Red Hat Cements SOA Position

Red Hat Software continued to mine the intersection of open-source software and enterprise middleware this week, launching a new SOA (service-oriented architecture) product bundle, acquiring information-management software vendor MetaMatrix and crafting a partnership with integration vendor Vitria Technology.


Red Hat is emerging as a major player in the SOA market. Its acquisition of Enterprise Integration Suite player MetaMatrix will improve the JBoss platform's ability to access data stored in applications that aren't yet SOA-enabled, competing head-to-head with IBM, BEA and Microsoft in the full Web services stack.
By moving JBoss to the same support and development model as its Enterprise Linux product, Red Hat is indicating that it sees the platform as relatively mature (though its ESB product is still in beta.) The partnership with Vitria signals another vote of confidence, following similar Red Hat partnerships with other vendors such as SOA Software, and is also in line with Vitria's strategy of supporting multiple ESBs.
Andy Dornan
Senior Technology Editor

The acquisition of MetaMatrix expands Red Hat's middleware offerings. Last year, the open-source software provider acquired the popular JBoss application server for $350 million. MetaMatrix will be incorporated into Red Hat's JBoss division, the vendor said.

Red Hat this week also launched the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, which brings together its disparate middleware products into a single offering. The new app platform--offered in distribution style similar to Red Hat's Linux distro--is an integrated, tested and Red Hat-certified combination of JBoss
Application Server, Hibernate and JBoss Seam into a single product for deploying and hosting applications and Web services.

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