JBoss Inc. announced it has acquired distributed transaction monitor and Web services technologies owned by Arjuna Technologies and HP, and will open source them for the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). In one strategic move, JBoss has propelled JEMS further into the high-end market long presided over by proprietary application platforms, while at the same time making pricey, enterprise-quality middleware software freely available to the mass market.

The acquisition includes Arjuna Transaction Service Suite (ArjunaTS) and Arjuna's Web Services Transaction implementation, the market's only implementation supporting both leading Web services specifications -- Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) and Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF). This implementation is also one of the few that has demonstrated interoperability with other industry leaders such as Microsoft and IBM. The core Arjuna transaction engine will be the foundation of JBoss Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

"With this acquisition, JBoss is sending a strong, clear signal to the market," said Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management at JBoss Inc. "JBoss is committed to enabling the JEMS stack for the high-end market and cementing its position as the leading open source platform for SOA, or service-oriented architecture. We're doing this by developing our own products as we did for clustering, embracing open source projects as we did for business rules and acquiring proprietary software and open sourcing it as we are now doing for distributed transactioning."

ArjunaTS adds powerful distributed transaction processing capabilities to the JEMS stack, which will appeal to enterprises in sectors such as financial services and telecommunications where "five-nines" availability is crucial. These capabilities include support for multimodal transaction processing across client/server, Internet, mobile and wireless, SOA and event-driven architectures and the ability to handle high transaction volume across diverse middleware environments straddling CORBA, J2EE and Web services.

Arjuna's Web Services Transaction implementation delivers another key component of JBoss' expansion into SOA. As a co-author of the WS-TX and WS-CAF specifications, Arjuna has developed an industrial-strength Web services implementation that uniquely supports both specs. Among large players in Web services, a line is being drawn between the specifications, with WS-TX supported by companies like Arjuna, Microsoft and IBM and WS-CAF supported by Arjuna, Oracle and Sun among others. With Arjuna's Web Services Transaction implementation as a core product, JEMS bridges the gap between these two camps and remains true to its inherent flexibility and platform-independence.

"HP is pleased to continue driving growth in the open source community with JBoss. This acquisition enables JBoss to expand the reach of open source into the enterprise by making a high-end distributed transaction processing technology readily available," said Christine Martino, vice president of Open Source and Linux at HP. "HP's leadership with JBoss continues to set the standard for open source solutions, and the addition of the Arjuna technology to JBoss JEMS increases choice and confidence for enterprise-class J2EE platform solutions."

As part of the agreement, Mark Little, Arjuna's chief architect and one of the original creators of ArjunaTS, joins JBoss as director of standards. A distinguished expert in the area of distributed transaction processing and an active participant in standards groups, Little will spearhead JBoss' continued efforts in setting industry standards and lead technical strategy for JBoss ESB and the distributed transaction monitor. He is one of the primary authors of the OMG Activity Service specification and participated on the J2EE Activity Service for Extended Transactions Expert Group (JSR-95). Additionally, Little leads the Java API for XML Transactions Expert Group (JSR-156) and works on the OTS Revision Task Force and many OASIS and W3C standards efforts. He is also the co-author of several books, including Java Transaction Processing: Design and Implementation, published by Prentice Hall PTR.

"JBoss is already a driving force of consolidation in Java and, given its ambitious vision, will likely be doing the same for SOA," commented Little. "The addition of Arjuna and HP distributed transaction monitor technology to JEMS open source middleware creates a powerful SOA solution for any enterprise. I look forward very much to working with the talented JBoss management and technical teams to solidify the company's leadership position in this rapidly changing market."