Red Hat buys JBoss!

by Cem Basman

Red Hat, the world's leading open source and Linux provider, announced today on their corporate homepage:

Red Hat will acquire JBoss for approximately $350 million in initial consideration, plus approximately $70 million subject to the achievement of certain future performance metrics. The transaction consideration is composed of approximately 40% in cash and 60% in Red Hat common stock.

JBoss, the global leader in open source middleware software, explains the rationale behind the deal:

Together, JBoss and Red Hat will form the industry’s largest independent open source provider that provides additional customer value through wider open source technology choice, trusted services from a single provider, a large and vibrant developer community, and an expansive partner eco-system.

Red Hat quotes Gartner, the application integration and middleware and portal (AIM) markets for license revenue is according to them preliminarily estimated to more than $6.5 billion in 2006.

This is going to be real tough for Oracle, WebSphere, BEA and other majors - The "Red Boss" has made it clear ...

Links & Voices:

Gillmor on the deal in a 26 minutes podcast. Good analyze.

A true software expert, Dave Dargo, analyzes the deal:

However, keeping JBoss out of the hands of Oracle was a service to the entire IT industry and Red Hat deserves many thanks for that.

Blogs from inside JBoss:

Investors perspective:

Comments

The Apache Foundation, the Free Software Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation, among others, might dispute the assertion that Red Hat is the world's leading open source provider.

David Richardson, 2006-04-11

David, well sort of. But read Red Hat's company description (as filed with the SEC) PART I, ITEM 1. / BUSINESS / GENERAL ... just to understand their official wording and phrasing about their market positioning.

Cem Basman, 2006-04-11

It's no question that the named institutions are crucial for Linux success, but RedHat sets the industry standard - and it looks like they continue to do so.

Philipp Sury, 2006-04-11

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