Tripod believes that companies can derive significant benefits from the
use of open source technologies. The benefits obtained from open source
technologies however depends on the company’s technology needs and
a number of factors about the technology itself. At Tripod, we believe
that a technology must be evaluated based on its merits and its business
applicability. To this end we have developed a set of evaluation criteria
to identify if a technology is ready for business applications. We have
subsequently applied these criteria to the JBoss products and present
the analysis in the following table:
| Criteria |
Description |
JBoss |
| Maturity |
Is the product technologically mature; Is it competitive to similar
non-open source products widely in use in the market
|
The JBoss Application server is in version 4.0 and has had over
4 Million downloads since 2002. The usage volume is an attest to the
product maturity as is the fact that it is the first application server
to be J2EE 1.4 certified. |
| Architecture |
Does the product employ a standards based architecture? How widely
accepted is this standard? |
JBoss is 100% compliant with the J2EE specification and employs
such architectural constructs as aspect oriented programming (AOP)
and a fast microkernel design, which significantly reduce application
bloating and improve application performance. It also supports JMX,
which allows for easy plug and play of services and ease of integration
with existing applications. |
| Resource Pool |
How big is the pool of resources that are knowledgeable about the
product? |
There have been over 4 Million downloads of JBoss since 2002 and
about 42% of J2EE developers have used JBoss. In addition to this
JBoss certified developers from JBoss partners such as Tripod are
available to provide product specific training and mentoring. |
| Support |
What are the support options available for a user of the product?
Is there accountability for support? |
JEMS is supported by JBoss, Inc both directly and through a network
of service partners like Tripod Technologies, LLC. This support is
very similar to the support available for any licensed software product. |
| Indemnity |
Is there indemnity in the use of the open source product? This is
important for companies that are looking at deploying business critical
systems on open source platforms. |
JBoss provides indemnity protection against intellectual property
claims brought against users of JEMS or other products from JBoss,
Inc. This provides the protection required by companies seeking to
use open source software for business critical applications. |
| Barriers to Migration |
What are the barriers to migrating existing applications from their
current products to open source products? Large barriers to migration
will negate any ROI gains achieved in terms of license fees savings. |
JBoss’s compliance to the J2EE standards means that any J2EE
compliant application can run on JBoss without significant changes.
This enables companies that currently deploy their applications on
application servers like WebLogic or WebSphere to migrate to JBoss,
without throwing away their current investment in application development.
In addition to this migration packages from JBoss partners like Tripod
allow companies to ensure that ROI achieved by the migration to JBoss
will not be diluted in the effort to migrate existing applications.
|
It can be seen from the above analysis that JBoss provides significant
benefits to companies that are looking for a platform for their enterprise
application development and integration needs. Additionally Tripod’s
services provide an excellent mechanism for companies to leverage
the benefits provided by JBoss products.
