Red Hat promises double R&D investment for JBoss

Promise of extra funds could soften the impact of JBoss chief's exit

Red Hat is promising to double its investment in the future of its JBoss middleware acquisition.

In a briefing yesterday, Tim Yeaton, senior vice-president of marketing at Red Hat, said, “If you look at our research and development investment in JBoss, that’s going to double from 1 March.”

Yeaton said the decision to boost R&D had nothing to do with the recent departure of former JBoss chief executive Marc Fleury. In interviews, Fleury had complained about lack of investment in JBoss R&D.

In an interview with eWeek late last year, he said: “I went to Red Hat to get an investment in the JBoss R&D division to grow it quickly. That still really hasn't happened. That's a bit of a point of frustration for me personally.”

Red Hat’s Yeaton said that was because Red Hat was initially focused on integrating JBoss.

“Marc decided not come back for personal reasons but we had two waves of investment planned,” he said. “The first was focused on integration itself and the field – service, support, sales and that sort of thing. We needed to get past the integation and build out the go-to-market.”

Now, JBoss will be given resources to develop its enterprise service bus, service-oriented architecture, business process management, portal and rules engine work, he added.

However, Neil Macehiter of analyst firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton said Red Hat and JBoss community and partner support could be more important than funding or Fleury’s departure.

“I haven’t got a sense of too much concern from the JBoss community over Red Hat’s ownership and [JBoss chief technology officer] Sacha Labourey is very highly thought of,” Macehiter said.