Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Microsoft, JBoss link up

The deal doesn't mean Microsoft is softening its hard-line stance toward open-source development or becoming a Java enthusiast, Platform Technology Strategy Director Bill Hilf insisted. But with a significant number of JBoss customers deploying on Microsoft's platform, it's in both vendors' interests to ensure those deployments go smoothly, executives from the two companies said.

I guess only the JBoss and Microsoft guys really know the motivations behind this relationship but it sure is interesting. I wonder how much visibility the optimizations will have in open source software.

The article goes on to say that "JBoss...estimates that half its customers run its JBoss Enterprise Middleware System on Microsoft's Windows Server." I guess I'm surprised at how many customers are running JBoss on Windows Server. Or, I'm surprised that I'm surprised... I've only had about five years of J2EE experience and it's always been deployed on Solaris or Linux. My impression, shaped by senior managers, is that Windows Server is not reliable or secure enough to run a production environment. Either this is naive or a lot of JBoss customers aren't running in production environments (probably the former). I'm curious about other perspectives.


1 comment:

darprice said...

Hi Joe,

A lot of that comes down to cost. Many places which are using JBOSS aren't what I'd consider "production" environments, which typically means they buy their computers and whatever it has it has. If it is MS, then MS is their standard. Now most shops run a variety of platforms (which is why I like Java), and if properly maintained and configured, MS Server (or XP or 2000 or whatever flavor) can be properly secured - it is just a lot more work to keep it that way. The main reason people use other flavors isn't necessarily that they are inherently more secure; they are just less of a target.

Now, in this scenario, JBOSS gets to tout that it is OS friendly and MS gets to tout it plays well with others (helps with those anti-trust claims) - particularly an application which at this moment in time really isn't a direct threat to anything MS is doing. At the same time, they get to see the inner workings of the tool so they can build their own (or enhance .NET with the findings).