Red Hat has purchased
Amentra, an IT consulting
firm with open-source expertise, to sell its JBoss Java infrastructure to enterprises
as the basis for SOAs (service-oriented architectures).
Amentra, a privately held systems integrator that specializes in SOA and business
process management, will continue business as usual as an independent company
owned by Red Hat. The specific financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Amentra's 140 employees will continue to work out of their current offices in
Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Tampa, Florida; and
Richmond, Virginia.
Amentra is a certified JBoss systems integrator that has a solid reputation
among enterprises; ExxonMobil, Pfizer and Merck are among its clients. The company
also has been recognized for its expertise in providing open-source and SOA
services by research firm Gartner.
Red Hat said it's tapped Amentra to support what it calls its "Enterprise
Acceleration" initiative, which is aimed at providing the JBoss open-source
middleware in the enterprise for SOA and BPM deployments. When the plan -- which
includes sales and marketing support and new JBoss technology testing centers
-- was unveiled last month, Red Hat Middleware Business Vice President Craig
Muzilla said Red Hat hopes that JBoss will play a major role in 50 percent of
all enterprise software infrastructure deployments by 2015.
Red Hat purchased JBoss in April 2006 and, like its Linux OS, now has two versions
of the software -- a community ".org" version that is free for everyone
to use and an enterprise version that has fees and maintenance tied to it. The
company is hoping to use JBoss as a springboard to become successful beyond
its enterprise Linux business and quiet critics who claim the company can't
make a multi-product portfolio work.
