Red Hat to buy JBoss

Red Hat is to extend its open-source reach by buying application server leader JBoss.

JBoss was recently reported as a target for Oracle and subsequently suggested that floatation was more likely but now will become part of Red Hat in a deal worth about $350m and up to $70m more, depending on performance.

Red Hat is the world’s biggest Linux distributor but has far largely limited itself to the operating system space. The firm said the deal would help it offer an “on-ramp” to service-oriented architectures. However, watchers said it has recently been making moves to develop its own stack.

“This increases the potential value of Red Hat to enterprises that could have perceived it as just a commodity operating system company,” said Neil Macehiter of analyst firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton.

“It’s something of a surprise given that Red Hat was already making an investment in developing its stack but this gives it more credibility. There are far more likely to be synergies with Red Hat than with Oracle which would have been a cultural mismatch.”

However, on the negative side, Red Hat partners such as IBM and Sun that have their own applications servers might not view the deal kindly, he added.