At a live, CommunityOne press conference here in San Francisco, DZone sat down with Red Hat's Craig Muzilla and Mark Little to get first hand details of the new JBoss Open Choice application platform strategy.

Aimed at providing developers with the ability to choose the framework, language and programming technologies that best fit the application requirements they are trying to achieve, Red Hat today expanded its Java application server portfolio , adding three new profiles to support varying degrees of workloads across basic Java Web applications, Rich Internet Applications, and enterprise, transactional applications. The three new platform products include:

• JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 (Early Access) - JBoss AS 5.x with full support for enterprise features such as clustering, caching, messaging, transactions, and a full Web services stack.
• JBoss Enterprise Web Platform 5.0 - targetted at mid-sized workloads, focused on light and rich Java applications. Builds upon the new Java EE Web Profile with a lighter weight version of JBoss AS which still provides features for clustering, caching and Web services
• JBoss Enterprise Web Server 1.0 - JBoss Enterprise Web Server with enterprise product support lifecycle for Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat. 

"Java EE has spawned a variety of simplified development approaches to address the evolving needs of the current marketplace," said Craig Muzilla, Vice President, Middleware Business Unit at Red Hat. "However, many of the Java EE implementations out there today don't address this variety."

The two primary principals driving JBoss' Open Choice strategy include the committment to support alternative programming models, APIs and languages and to release products configured along the lines of different profiles, based on varying workloads, said Craig.

While Tomcat may suffice for many applications in the beginning, they will eventually need more sophisticated services like transactional messaging and clustering, according to Mark Little, CTO of the JBoss Division at Red Hat.  At the same time, you don't want an all-or-nothing approach - you may want certain enterprise services a la carte, which is why pluggability and modularity are key. 

And that's what Red Hat is banking on with it's new, three-pronged approach.

“There is no one size fits all, however, we want to allow our core services to be deployed into a wider variety of environments," said Mark. "The microcontainer is extremely adaptable and flexible out of the box.  It provides a future proof path to our existing and new users’

Available today is also the JBoss Web Framework Kit, which includes enterprise-class versions of Google Web Toolkit, RichFaces, the Spring Framework, and Struts. Future versions are expected to include additional rich application frameworks. 

You can learn more about Red Hat's Open Choice offerings here.