Red Hat has announced the completion of its acquisition of JBoss. By acquiring JBoss, the global leader in open source middleware, Red Hat is now positioned to accelerate the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA) and enable the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, secure open source platform.

"Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss reflects a desire by our global customers to accelerate and expand the use of open source in the enterprise," said Matthew Szulik, Chairman and CEO, Red Hat. "The innovation and value of the open source platform continues to transform the performance of the twenty-first century enterprise."

With this announcement, JBoss will become a division of Red Hat with a common business model of delivering and providing production support of open source software. Customers will now have access to a single, proven global production support organization that can service both Red Hat and JBoss customers, in addition to procuring JBoss offerings through the established global channels of Red Hat.

Marc Fleury, founder and former CEO of JBoss and now Senior Vice President and General Manager of the JBoss division of Red Hat, noted: "Joining forces with Red Hat makes absolute sense for JBoss employees, customers, partners and the community as a whole. We share a common passion for innovation, technology and open source. Red Hat will give JBoss a platform to grow, so we can both continue to deliver exceptional open source products, services and customer value. I am personally very excited to help further drive the adoption of our market-leading solutions."

"As one of the largest and most experienced global benefits providers servicing more than 10 million plan participants across all markets, CitiStreet depends on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss for our operations every day," said Barry Strasnick, Chief Information Officer, CitiStreet. "We have realized the value of open source for the enterprise, especially in the areas of cost-savings, performance and security. The acquisition of JBoss by Red Hat will only benefit our future management, development and deployment."

"At Orbitz, we currently use both JBoss Application Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We believe the acquisition of JBoss and its integration with Red Hat will support our efforts to be more cost effective as we develop and deploy applications," said Chuck Clark, Director of Platform Technology, Orbitz. "We look forward to a more seamless integration of JBoss middleware components with Red Hat enterprise solutions."

The combination of Red Hat's proven portfolio of enterprise infrastructure solutions and JBoss' standards-based middleware technologies will help accelerate the shift to SOA by making innovative, powerful solutions available to developers and customers seeking to lower development and deployment costs.

"The JBoss product portfolio is an excellent technology fit with Red Hat's current enterprise solutions," said Al Gillen, Research Vice President, System Software, IDC. "The combination of Red Hat and JBoss will drive further innovations for the open source ecosystem -- yet by maintaining JBoss as a division, JBoss customers aboard other platforms should see continuity with the JBoss products they use."