Red Hat to deliver Java EE6 via PaaS with OpenShift

Red Hat, the provider of open source solutions, today announced that the Red Hat OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) now supports Java Enterprise Edition 6, powered by the company’s JBoss application server, one of the leading open source Java Enterprise Edition (EE) application servers that forms the basis for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

With this new integration, OpenShift becomes the first PaaS in the industry to deliver Java Enterprise Edition (EE) 6, simplifying how application developers build and deploy Java in the cloud, the company said.

OpenShift is a free PaaS for developers who leverage open source. Developers looking for a faster on-ramp to the cloud with built-in management and auto-scaling capabilities can use OpenShift so they can focus on coding mobile, social and enterprise applications while leaving stack setup, maintenance and operational concerns to a trusted hosted service, the company added.

First announced at the Red Hat Summit in May 2011, OpenShift redefined the PaaS space by offering a broad choice of supported languages, frameworks, databases and clouds, including Ruby, Python, Perl, PHP, Java EE, Spring, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB, MemBase and Memcache, all open source, helping developers avoid getting locked into any particular technology or platform, Red Hat said.

According to Red Hat, OpenShift Java EE 6 support is based on JBoss Application Server 7, an open source JBoss Community project.  Red Hat’s JBoss application server forms the foundation for the company’s JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, the next major release of the application platform, which is scheduled for release in early 2012. JBoss application servers are Java EE-certified, enabling a cloud-ready architecture with a lightweight footprint and dynamic container model to better support multi-core processing and multi-tenancy.

Red Hat claims that the combination of OpenShift with JBoss application server now allows Java EE to be more easily scaled, managed and monitored in the cloud and that by delivering JBoss in OpenShift, developers can take advantage of Java EE 6, one of the biggest advancements in Java in over ten years.

Java EE 6 includes Context and Dependency Injection (CDI), a standards-based, modern programming framework that makes it easier for developers to build dynamic applications and picks up where some proprietary frameworks left off, the company said.  CDI offers a more robust set of capabilities including eventing support and typing, delivering optimal flexibility for programmers. Additionally, as an open standard, more vendors support and contribute to the specification, allowing developers to have their choice of programming approaches without vendor lock-in.

“While developers and enterprises have long been interested in the time to market advantages offered by PaaS platforms, the difficulty of migrating existing applications to incompatible frameworks has slowed adoption,” said Stephen O’Grady, principal analyst and co-founder of RedMonk. “With EE6 available by integrating the JBoss application server technology, Red Hat’s OpenShift platform is aimed at allowing enterprises to transition their existing Java EE applications and skills to the cloud with zero friction.”

“OpenShift today provides differentiation in the industry as the first on-ramp to get Java EE 6 applications into the cloud,” said Brian Stevens, CTO and VP, Engineering at Red Hat.  “With this, Red Hat has solved multi-tenant problems with its expertise in providing full-stack support. Combining our technology expertise from the hypervisor through the operating system and middleware to the cloud, our technology is integrated to allow for easier development of applications with free Java EE in PaaS. This is an efficiency unique to Red Hat through OpenShift today.”