JBoss Inc. on Monday plans to flesh out details of its open source middleware stack consisting largely of existing software technologies, with the company intending to fill out the stack over time.

The JBoss Enterprise Middleware System, or JEMS, features the company"s JBoss application server, the Tomcat Web server, JBoss Cache, Hibernate object-relational mapping software, JBoss jBPM (Java Business Process Management), and JBoss Portal, which is currently in a developer release and not generally available as a complete product. Underlying the stack is the JBoss JBus microkernel, which is to support "remoting," or communicating over different protocols, and aspect-oriented programming. The microkernel provides management, hosting, and communications for services. A loosely coupled architecture in the stack allows for plug-and-play capabilities, according to JBoss.

"What we"re saying is all of these and more are going to be a complete middleware stack," said Bob Bickel, JBoss vice president of strategy and corporate development. BEA Systems Inc. is eyeing application deployments such as financial, telecommunications, and travel systems with its middleware stack.

Improvements planned for JEMS include portal enhancements and the addition of an enterprise service bus, due by the end of next year. The ESB will be JBoss" message-based integration platform. The general release of JBoss Portal, due in the first quarter of 2005, meanwhile, will support portlets.

"Our goal is to take (JBoss) from being just an application server company to being an entire middleware company," Bickel said

JBoss next summer is planning to release Version 5.0 of its application server, featuring grid enablement of the microkernel. The application server also will support aspect-oriented programming and "Plain Old Java Objects," or POJOs, which will support aspects such as security, transactions, Web services enablement, and XML tags. POJOs present a .Net-style of programming requiring less coding, Bickel said.

JBoss offers its software under an open source format, charging no fees for the actual software but selling support and training. Sales grew five to six times from 2003 to 2004, Bickel said. The company has commercial middleware companies such as BEA in its sights, Bickel acknowledged.

But an Oracle Corp. middleware user Norm Fjeldheim, senior vice president and CIO at Qualcomm Inc., said in an interview last week that open source offerings such as JBoss and the MySQL database are not up to par with commercial counterparts.

"Everything I"ve looked at in open source is nowhere near ready," except for Linux, Fjeldheim said. He added could not remember how recently Qualcomm had examined JBoss. Fjeldheim said he did expect open source technologies to be a force in the future.

Open source software may not yet be ready for running something as complex as an airline reservation system, said Yefim Natis, vice president and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Inc. But open source is suitable for moderately demanding business applications such as departmental applications, he said.

JBoss with its middleware stack is following other companies in moving beyond being just an application server vendor, Natis said. "They are successfully challenging (rivals such as BEA, IBM Corp., and Oracle) with their application server as it is," Natis said.

"Many of the things (in the stack) they have offered before. But offering it as a complete item presumes that there is a common support available and there is a common install available," Natis said. Bickel said the stack would offer these features.