ObjectWeb Federates Commercial Grade Open-Source Projects for Business Integration

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 16, 2004--ObjectWeb:

-- Extension of ObjectWeb's code base with 3 components for portal, content and business process management makes the consortium's set of commercial grade middleware projects an unrivalled roster in the open-source world

“Red Hat is committed to promoting the development and adoption of open-source software by the largest possible community. We see ObjectWeb as the best organization to host the Byline project.”

ObjectWeb, the international not-for-profit consortium dedicated to open-source infrastructure software, today announced the extension of its roster of open-source projects with 3 Java middleware components for business integration: Byline content management system; eXo Platform enterprise portal; MOBE business process execution engine.

With over 50 active open-source projects, ObjectWeb has a proven record of success in federating the development of commercial grade middleware components and tools, including JOnAS - J2EE(tm) 1.4 application server; Bonita, Shark, JaWE - workflow utilities; JORAM - message-oriented middleware.

The 3 new projects Byline, eXo Platform and MOBE complement ObjectWeb's open-source middleware offering with cutting edge software providing high level features for business integration. These projects were initially developed by ObjectWeb member companies in the framework of commercial offers and recently contributed to ObjectWeb code base.

"The very rapid extension of our roster of production-ready, high quality components is made possible by our organization as a multilateral home ground for professional open-source projects where companies join forces to implement open standards, create software commons and share best practices," said Jean-Pierre Laisne, ObjectWeb Chairman and Linux & Open Source Strategy Manager for Bull.

Red Hat works closely with ObjectWeb and has contributed content management software to the consortium. In addition, Red Hat Application Server offers the JOnAS technology as part of its open-source architecture. Byline, the content management software contributed by Red Hat, is the result of years of experience developing data-centric web applications for enterprise clients.

Paul Cormier, Red Hat executive VP of engineering and ObjectWeb board member, explained: "Red Hat is committed to promoting the development and adoption of open-source software by the largest possible community. We see ObjectWeb as the best organization to host the Byline project."

eXo Platform is an innovative open-source enterprise portal solution built on the top of the Java(tm) Server Faces (JSF) web layer, one of the first to implement the portlet API (JSR 168), receiving certification of compliance from Sun Microsystems in December 2003. eXo Platform has been contributed to ObjectWeb by the new consortium member eXo Platform SARL.

MOBE (MidOffice BPEL Engine) is a business process execution engine compliant with the OASIS standard BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). MOBE is used by Dutch companies and local government agencies such as the municipality of Almere, Netherlands.

In June 2004 ObjectWeb launched a market-driven initiative to federate the development of open-source components allowing commercial vendors to build ESB-related offerings. Formerly proposed as a commercial product, MOBE has been announced in open-source by ObjectWeb Dutch member company eMaxx in August 2004 with the first goal of being evaluated in the framework of the Enterprise Service Bus initiative.

ObjectWeb's rationale is to help the open-source middleware ecosystem grow and, in return, let ecosystem growth bring new opportunities to all economical actors. Vendors complement open-source components with their own commercial added-value, in the form of software or professional services. User companies therefore benefit from the freedom of choice between differentiated offers proposed by an ever growing number of vendors.

"ObjectWeb's code base grows because technology users ask for it and because this growth meets the interests of our member companies, their customers and the ecosystem in general. Today, our code base encompasses components and platforms of commercial grade that altogether provide a set of functionalities unrivalled in the open-source world," said Laisne.

About ObjectWeb

Founded in 2002 by Bull, France Telecom and INRIA, ObjectWeb is a consortium of leading companies and research organizations from around the world who have joined forces to produce next generation of open-source Middleware. ObjectWeb's goal is to provide Real-Time Enterprises with independent solutions which combine quality and robustness at the best possible performance/cost ratio. ObjectWeb targets alternative solutions to proprietary products for e-business, EAI, data connectivity, grid computing, and enterprise messaging. Based on open standards, ObjectWeb's middleware includes application servers, components, frameworks and tools. Examples of ObjectWeb's "cost killer" platforms are JOnAS - an open-source implementation of the J2EE specification, JORAM - a message-oriented middleware with JMS(TM) / SOAP connectors and Enhydra - a Java/XML application server. http://www.objectweb.org

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