Red Hat Augments OpenShift For Container Push
Red Hat continues to build up its arsenal of OpenShift application platform capabilities as it adds integration and other middleware capabilities designed to get Docker containers up and running in production.
The open-source leader (NYSE: RHT) said Wednesday (Dec. 16) it is rolling out three new services on its OpenShift platform based on its JBoss enterprise-class application and integration middleware. The rollout is designed to capitalize on the steady enterprise shift to lightweight micro-services in general and Docker containers in particular.
Despite growing momentum, others predict it may take another year or so before application containers move from DevOps to production.
The new OpenShift capabilities include an application integration service that connects applications, data and APIs for use with analytics and other business tasks. Also included are a real-time decision management service and an in-memory NoSQL data store. The latter is intended to boost application performance while helping to scale operations.
Red Hat said the new services would be delivered as Docker container images on OpenShift as a way to leveraging a lightweight micro-service architecture.
The new services are intended to replace "traditional practices of downloading, installing, configuring, developing, and then deploying," Mike Piech, Red Hat's vice president and general manager for middleware, noted in a blog post.
The company added that the new services extend its xPaaS (extensible open platform-as-a-service) initiative launched in September 2013. The new OpenShift services are based on its portfolio of JBoss middleware counterparts.
The new services also underpin Red Hat's embrace of Docker containers since it launched its Atomic enterprise platform for hosting containers. It announced a new operating system in March fine-tuned to run workloads with Linux containers. The new container host was based on its earlier Project Atomic application container initiative.
In November, the company released a preview of its Atomic Enterprise Platform container infrastructure in connection with the latest release of its OpenShift Enterprise platform.
Along with the new middleware services unveiled this week, Red Hat also released additions to its JBoss middleware portfolio, including its latest business process management suite and a business rules management platform.
Red Hat said the latest releases include data mapping and rule integrity checking tools along with APIs that can be used to enable these management applications.
Red Hat said the release also "makes it possible for users to provision a Linux container image for the JBoss [business rules management system] decision server that can be deployed on a container host." That, the company added, is designed to help "bring application containers to the enterprise and serves as an important piece of our containerized middleware capabilities."
While Red Hat and other container ecosystem vendors are betting that more enterprises will embrace the technology, skeptics argue that it may be another year or so before the Docker and other container platforms move from the DevOps domain to production workloads.
"Even with the front office starting to pay closer attention to the benefits of containers from a business perspective, it will be at least another year before million dollar contracts with container companies becomes a regular occurrence," predicted Luke Marsden, CTO of container data management vendor ClusterHQ.
