News

JRockit puts on Red Hat

• By John K. Waters
• August 11, 2003

At LinuxWorld, BEA Systems announced that Red Hat will distribute its Linux JVM, JRockit, on the Red Hat Network. The agreement enables BEA to certify BEA WebLogic JRockit, as well as BEA WebLogic Server, to run on Red Hat Linux Advanced Server.

Bob Griswold, vice president and general manager at San Jose, Calif.-based BEA's Java Runtime Products group, said Red Hat would distribute JRockit as the only third-party software on its distribution network. BEA will also support the new Red Hat Advanced Server in its expanded relationship with the Raleigh, N.C.-based Linux distro, he said.

In addition, BEA announced that it will be working with longtime partner Hewlett-Packard (HP) to provide Linux products, services and support to customers migrating to, and deploying, Java applications on Linux.

According to Rick Jackson, BEA vice president of product and solutions marketing, WebLogic Platform 8.1 and the JRockit JVM will be bundled with HP's ProLiant servers and Integrity servers. Both companies strongly support Intel architectures, particularly Itanium. The combination of Intel hardware, and the software and services for Java on Linux, will offer greater reliability, performance and TCO reductions against competitors' offerings, Jackson claimed.

For its part, HP unveiled products focused on Linux systems management and clustering software that it already sells for Windows and Unix platforms. Among the other products and services, HP rolled out:

* A Linux edition of its HP ProLiant Essentials Rapid Deployment Pack, which is used to provision and re-provision Windows-based ProLiant machines;

* Serviceguard server-level management software for Linux, which supports Red Hat Enterprise Server and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and will be available for HP's 64-bit, Itanium-based Integrity line of servers later this year;

* ProLiant High Availability for Lotus Domino on Linux; and

* OpenView Network Node Manager Starter Edition for Linux, a basic network management program for Linux system administrators.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer and imaging systems maker had nothing but praise for the open-source OS, and claimed to have made $2 billion on Linux-related hardware, software and services. HP representatives said the firm is committing extensive resources to its Linux programs, including more than 5,000 services and support people. "We want to drive home how mainstream Linux is becoming," Peter Blackmore, executive vice president of the HP Enterprise Systems Group, told his keynote audience.

Blackmore said Linux is central to HP's Adaptive Enterprise Strategy, a model that relies on a horizontal architecture based on Web services, business process management systems and a grid deployment.

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