Seven years after Red Hat snatched JBoss out from under Larry Ellison’s nose, the enterprise Linux distributor is continuing to squeeze the juice from the open-source application server.
Red Hat spent $350m buying JBoss in 2006 and today it forms the technology backbone and the brand-name basis of Red Hat’s enterprise middleware suite.
And, as Red Hat grows, so does JBoss – with customers who pick Red Hat Enterprise Linux increasingly making JBoss their app server of choice.
Werner Knoblich, Red Hat’s EMEA general manager, told The Reg yesterday that revenue for the JBoss application server is growing at 40 to 50 per cent per year.
And for all the work that Red Hatters put into building and buying the JBoss Enterprise Middleware suite, it’s the application server that remains the door-opener for customers and makes the lions’ share of the money.