The company also is upgrading its portal framework, adding support for the WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) specification.

By joining the standards organizations, JBoss seeks greater visibility, the opportunity to contribute to the specification process and to ensure that its JEMS (JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite) conforms to emerging standards relative to Web services and SOA, the company said.

"Much like JBoss is on the executive committee of the JCP (Java Community Process), we felt it was important at this stage to begin to join and assert ourselves in OASIS and the other standards organizations," said Shaun Connolly, JBoss vice president of product management.

Mark Little, director of standards at JBoss, will be the company's primary representative at the organizations.

Red Hat's recent acquisition of JBoss had no bearing on the decision to participate in the organizations, but a Microsoft-JBoss interoperability agreement announced last September was a factor, Connolly said, adding that Web services interoperability is part of that agreement.