IBM Software Chief Defends WebSphere Against JBoss

Speaking to reporters at IBM's developerWorks Live conference here, Steve Mills, vice president and group executive for the IBM Software Group, defended WebSphere when questioned about some industry analysts' claims that JBoss, an open-source J2EE application server, is putting revenue pressure on application servers such as WebSphere and BEA Systems' WebLogic.

Mills said open-source Java application servers such as JBoss and The Apache Software Foundation's Tomcat are not designed to handle the type of high-transactional processing that WebSphere Application Server is and, therefore, are not in a position to take market share away from IBM.

"I'm not particularly concerned about JBoss and Tomcat," Mills said. "There are always simple things designed to solve simple problems.

On the other hand, "more than 6,000 people work on WebSphere. It's a very sophisticated product offering" not threatened by freeware.

IBM and BEA have sought to offer low-cost versions of their application servers, but mainly by taking out some core Java support in the express versions of each of their products.

IBM WebSphere Express and BEA WebLogic Express support Java Server Pages and servlet development. But neither has support for Enterprise JavaBeans, Java Messaging Services or other higher-level facets of Java application development.

JBoss, on the other hand, offers full support for J2EE, including those higher-level Java functions. Apache Tomcat, like WebSphere Express and WebLogic Express, is a low-level Java container.

Shawn Willett, principal analyst at research firm Current Analysis, said JBoss does compete with WebSphere on some level because of the "strong intersection between Linux users and JBoss users." IBM has a significant investment in Linux as an operating environment on which WebSphere is deployed.

However, Willett said IBM's and BEA's moves to lower licensing costs for their application servers have strengthened their position in the market, especially since they offer substantial technical support and documentation for their products that open-source groups do not offer.

"I think IBM and BEA have a point that license costs have come down to the point that it is irrelevant in many cases, especially considering support costs," Willett said.