Red Hat Portal Release Steps Up Development Capabilities

Red Hat debuted a new release of its JBoss portal software Thursday, continuing to build out its middleware offerings that have become the vendor’s fastest selling product line.

The new portal will provide Red Hat channel partners with service and consulting opportunities, either within vertical industries or -- for smaller resellers -- within regional areas, said Craig Muzilla, vice president and general manager of Red Hat’s middleware business unit, during a press conference at the Red Hat Summit and JBoss World conference in Boston.

The most significant enhancement in the JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform 5.0 is the new user interface, which reduces the time and cost of creating, deploying and managing Web applications, said Jason Andersen, senior product manager for the product. A new JBoss Portlet Bridge component in the portal software makes it easier to reuse code and other Web assets without re-engineering, Andersen said.

The company also unveiled a technical preview of a content management module, JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform Site Publisher, which will be offered as an optional add-on product for the portal. Site Publisher is based on the Java-based application platform from eXo.

Red Hat, best known for its implementation of the Linux operating system, acquired JBoss in 2006 for $350 million. At the time JBoss was primarily a Java-based application server. But Red Hat has since expanded the JBoss line to include development tools and frameworks, management tools and other products.

Earlier this week during the company’s first-quarter earnings call CEO Jim Whitehurst said JBoss is Red Hat’s fastest growing product line.