March 10th, 2008
Red Hat calls JBOSS problems solved and marketing related
Addressing a blogger’s snarky criticisms directly, the Red Hat vice president in charge of JBOSS’ middleware insisted the unit’s problems are now under control and were really all down to marketing anyway.
Craig Muzilla said a Red Hat reorganization over the last six months has given him responsibility for middleware profits, and he’s now applying market lessons to addressing perceived problems.
Muzilla was a senior vice president at MetaMatrix, which Red Hat acquired last year.
He admitted the marketing effort was troubled before he joined the company. ”In the process of integration there were certainly hiccups. Some people left. It was a healthy enough number that it made a difference.”
Still, “We’ve had growth every quarter this year,” he said. “We’ve been doing a lot organizationally to move things forward.”
Specifically, “We added an overlay sales force who are specialists in middleware, hiring people from BEA and other middleware companies.”
Pre-sales, sales and support teams have been trained so ”those calling on large companies know who to call on, the basic value proposition of JBOSS, and that wasn’t the case in the first quarters after the acquisition.”
The development team, however, has stayed together, Muzilla insisted, helped by “compensation structures with participation in stock programs” and a commitment to giving them a sense that they have a platform for being heard.
As a result, the community has grown a lot, he said.
“At the time of the acquisition we had 10 million downloads. In the next 18 months we hit 20 million. That’s one quantitative indication.
“We haven’t seen any degradation in the community,” he added. “They’re not abandoning ship.” He said industry surveys show JBOSS holding 30-38% of the Java-based application server marketplace.
“My understanding is the alternatives have small market share. The others don’t even show up in single digits.”
Things like an annual JBOSS Innovator of the Year Award, announced at last month’s JBOSSWorld in Orlando (the first winner was Rivet Logic for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions) should keep the enthusiasm growing, he predicted.
“We’re coming up on 2 years since the acquisition. In the last four quarters we’ve done a lot and learned a lot. There was a lot of input from the executives at the JBOSS team.”
Rumors of the deal’s failure are greatly exaggerated. True? If you’re a customer, let us know what you think.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 03/10/08
