Red Hat has become an important Java player thanks to its acquisition of JBoss, which the company is now extending up the stack from the platform into SOA middleware. Because it's free and open source, JBoss has spread rapidly, even though most users aren't paying Red Hat customers. "We're in as many enterprises as BEA and IBM," says Shaun Connolly, VP of product management for JBoss at Red Hat.
Red Hat also baked the Xen hypervisor into its Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in order to offer a complete stack--albeit one that must run RHEL and so doesn't truly compete with XenSource and VMware. Red Hat says that most of the demand for virtualized services is in testing scenarios. Because Web services are relatively easy to create and can have a major impact on other parts of a hardware or software infrastructure, testing them in virtual environments is necessary to ensure compliance with industry standards and internal policies.
Sun's Solaris has its own built-in virtualization technology, called Containers. This is really application virtualization: Only one copy of the operating system runs, but apps are still separated. Applications do need to be able to run on Solaris, though the company offers a compatibility layer that emulates Linux APIs.
Sun also is entering the hypervisor market with xVM, open source management software technology that it hopes can reduce what Sun calls "VM sprawl," the growth of unmanaged--and sometimes entirely unknown--virtual machines throughout an enterprise. Though built on Xen, xVM includes failover and predictive self-healing technology that can isolate faulty hardware components without affecting individual VMs. By shipping a combo of Xen and management software, Sun is competing directly with specialist Xen vendors XenSource and Virtual Iron Software, and with VMware. Most of the non-Xen technology in xVM is ported from Solaris, though it doesn't require Solaris or any other Sun hardware or software.
THE SUPERFLUOUS OS
BEA doesn't sell a hypervisor, but so far it's taken app server virtualization the furthest with its WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (WLS-VE). Although BEA's impending acquisition by Oracle means plans are likely to change, WebLogic fills an important gap in Oracle's product line and was a major motivation for the acquisition. WLS-VE can run directly on top of VMware, with no need for an operating system at all. The theory is that because Java apps already run in a Java VM, the OS is largely superfluous. The hypervisor includes lower-level OS functionality such as device drivers, while BEA has added higher-level functions such as I/O and file storage into a new version of the JRockit Java VM that it calls LiquidVM.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
