Computerworld - ... in a middleware smackdown. While it may not produce as bloody a match as the once-epic struggle between Microsoft and Sun did, JBoss Inc. and Gluecode Software Inc. are squaring off for a tussle over which of their open-source alternatives is more superior to proprietary J2EE-based middleware from IBM, BEA Systems Inc. and other vendors.
This week, Atlanta-based JBoss unveils its JBoss Enterprise Middleware System (JEMS), an integrated software bundle that includes a Java application server, a business process management (BPM) engine and a set of Eclipse-based development tools. A corporate portal application is due to follow in next year's first quarter, and later in 2005, JBoss plans to ship an enterprise service bus that will perform interapplication messaging duties. Pricing for JEMS support starts at about $10,000.
Gluecode announced its enterprise-class Joe software stack last month, using application server, portal, database and BPM technologies from The Apache Software Foundation . The El Segundo, Calif.-based company has said it will add clustering capabilities and expanded Web services support to Joe in the first quarter of 2005. Annual support fees start at $3,500.
The rival offerings are getting the competitive juices flowing inside the CEOs of the two open-source companies. Gluecode's Winston Damarillo suggested that using open-source technology managed and controlled by a single company, such as JBoss, is less pure than relying on tools from a nonprofit group like Apache. Meanwhile, JBoss boss Marc Fleury dissed Gluecode's use of proprietary integration code that can't be relicensed on an open-source basis as definitely impure. Of course, you can avoid the intramural scuffle by downloading all the open-source technology for free and integrating it yourself. But what fun would that be? Stay tuned.
Marc Fleury, CEO of JBoss Inc.
... that's available to almost everyone. Each day, more than 30 million of the e-mail messages processed by Postini Inc.'s antispam service request transmission via the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. So the Redwood City, Calif.-based vendor has now added a TLS encryption option. When a TLS-equipped server sends a message to another system that supports the protocol, encrypted packets are exchanged. If TLS isn't enabled on the system at the receiving end, clear-text packets can still be processed. With TLS, end users don't need to do anything to secure their data, says Andrew Lochart, director of product marketing at Postini. He says that although TLS is requested on less than 10% of the total e-mail traffic that Postini handles, usage of the protocol is trending
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