IBM and Novell have agreed to join forces to capture a larger piece of the growing open source application server market. Under the agreement, Novell will deliver and support WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, making it the industry's most comprehensive open source-based server offering.
The agreement comes on the heels of the one-millionth distribution of WAS CE, IBM's open source-based application server, which is based on Apache Geronimo and free to download and use. IBM and Novell will offer support and migration tools to help customers using JBoss to quickly and easily move to WAS CE. Combining WAS CE with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell provides an unbeatable combination for the small and medium-size business (SMB) market, where Novell excels, and a compelling offering for enterprise customers with distributed computing environments, specifically in the retail and financial services industries. IBM and Novell will team on joint marketing and sales campaigns targeting customers around the world.
By entering into the agreement, IBM gains access to Novell's SMB market leadership, providing new sales opportunities from Novell's existing customer base. In return, Novell gains a strong global partner, allowing it to tap into IBM's worldwide sales force. The partnership will provide customers with an enterprise-ready open source alternative to JBoss, while developers will have an opportunity to build on a tested platform in WAS CE, with the full support of IBM, Novell and the open source community as they build their applications.
"Customers today are looking for an integrated solution to solve their application development needs," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. "Novell and IBM have partnered to bring customers a best-in-class experience by delivering two powerful software platforms through one channel. Now, when customers need support for their open source operating system or their open source application server, they can get it with one phone call to Novell."
In addition to the agreement with Novell, IBM is also introducing the next release of WAS CE -- WAS CE 2.0. WAS CE 2.0 will have full Java EE 5 standard support providing greater developer productivity leading to reduced costs, code re-usability, leveraging of existing assets, and increased IT responsiveness to business needs. A research report from Evans Data found that WAS CE gained share nearly three times as fast as JBoss in 2006 and the Java EE 5 certification can help IBM extend that leadership.
"By teaming with Novell, we're able to provide customers around the world with unmatched open source technologies and support," said Tom Rosamilia, general manager, IBM Application and Integration Middleware. "The one millionth distribution of WAS CE validates the fact that we're meeting the needs of developers and businesses looking to embrace open source-based technologies, and the agreement with Novell allows us to take that success to the next level." |
