Red Hat sets eyes on SOA

Red Hat wants to provide a platform that allows developers to run their applications

Red Hat plans to use the acquisition of Jboss to expand into service oriented architectures (SOAs), but has no intention to move into the database space, the company said at the Red Hat Summit in Nashville.

"Our combined [Red Hat and Jboss] vision is to build a platform for enabling the new IT infrastructure in the data centre as well as supporting the new application paradigm for SOA," said Tim Yeaton, Red Hat's senior vice president for enterprise solutions, during a keynote presentation.

Red Hat announced in April its intention to acquire Jboss for $420m. The deal was expected to close in May, but Red Hat has failed to meet that deadline.

Red Hat chief executive Matthew Szulik said in an interview with vnunet.com earlier this week that he expected the deal to close "soon".

The acquisition of the middleware vendor sparked speculation that Red Hat was looking to move up the software stack and that it could expand into the database market next. But Yeaton stressed that the company has no such plans.

Red Hat does not aim to create a full software stack, but wants to provide a platform that allows developers to run their applications, he explained.

"[Customers] don't make linear decisions about moving up the stack, but they are making decisions around the platform," Yeaton told delegates.

"We see our role in being the platform and the catalyst for whatever application environment makes the most sense to the customer."

SOAs better fit that strategy than a database because they provide access to data stored in databases as well as unstructured data sources.

"Whatever the form is, we want to have it available to component-based applications for ultimate consumption," said Yeaton.

"The notion of data services is much more important than to own a particular data source."