“Starting in early 2006, Red Hat will offer three new stacks aimed at simplifying and standardizing key open source application stacks, so that developers can focus on their applications instead of configuring the underlying platform. Each stack will be certified and supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and delivered in a subscription model. These new certified stacks will help customers get to market faster with their development projects, while giving them the confidence to deploy, knowing that Red Hat’s proven production support capability is behind them.”
Very smart. The direction that Red Hat is taking doesn’t interest me very much personally. However, this is a smart move for the enterprise market. It’s not for nothing that companies are starting to take up .NET. They want a full stack from a single vendor. Red Hat have good recognized brand for each level of the stacks they’re offering. All they have to do is get the word out that they’re offering this.
It’s a marginal move IMHO.
Integrating Apache/PHP/MySQL/Postgres is hardly rocket science today. It’s one of the most common web platforms today, so the labor savings of using the “integrated” stack isn’t truly large.
The Java integration is even simpler. With something like the NetBeans IDE able to deploy simply to Tomcat out of the box, added to that while integrating Java CAN be hard, notably when dealing with legacy code, developing it from scratch is dead easy. Even the Tomcat Developers HOWTO makes getting started very simple.
If you stick to the standard Java idioms for deployment (WAR and EAR files), setting up Tomcat and Java and deploying your application is really really simple. The hardest part is integrating Apache, and many are even forgoing that and simply using Tomcat outright.
It is interesting for their Enterprise model they’re not using JBoss, which has much greater mind share that most any other free server.
But the real crime is that their Java Enterprise stack simply doesn’t come anywhere near close to what Sun is doing with their Java Enterprise System and Solaris Enterprise System.
The bullet points alone from Suns announcement looks like the St. Valentines Day Massacre, and they’re overall stack goes far beyond a simple JEE container (and their JEE container IS quite good) by including Identity, SSO, and Directory services as well.
Obviously Red Hat offers some of this, but they’re presented as seperate pieces while Sun is working to integrate the entire suite.
The Sun SES system is basically identical to a MS Small Business Server with Active Directory and Exchange as well as the stock .NET transaction and MOM services.
And, of course, Suns software is Free Beer at the moment and will be OSS sooner than later.
So, it’s a baby step for Red Hat, but they’re in a fight to keep up.
The Solaris Enterprise System announced last week is all of what Redhat are offering and more.
Each stack will be certified and supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and delivered in a subscription model
So you have to pay Redhat for a certified config. Sun are giving it to you for nothing.
RedHat gives away everything as Open Source. What RedHat sells is services. Sun also gives away the source, but sells services.