ON is management software for JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS) which enables users to inventory, administer, configure, monitor, automatically update and provision applications based on JEMS.

JBoss officials said that a look at the open source systems management space shows a lack of a significant set of technologies or infrastructure available. Through the release of the technology, the middleware player is looking to create "a heterogenous systems management solution" that can be standardized in the open source arena.

JBoss already uses its agent technology to manage a variety of operating systems including Linux, Windows and some versions of Unix as well as JBoss middleware and Apache Web Server and Apache Tomcat.

The vendor will now look to the open source developer community to create management agents for other middleware products and for database software, officials said. JBoss intends to release blueprints, certification toolkits and methodologies that third-party developers can then use to validate their extensions and plug into the ON management for JEMS.

JBoss has yet to determine the specific open-source licenses it will use for the agent technology.

ON already integrates well with some third-party middleware, company officials said. They also indicated that Microsoft will be at the JBoss World meet showing integration between ON and its Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), an event and performance management tool for Windows Server System.

The open source agent move is the first major step JBoss has taken since Linux distribution company Red Hat completed its $350 million acquisition of the open source company just over a week ago. JBoss is now the middleware division of Red Hat. The Linux vendor has some systems management capabilities of its own with its Red Hat Network offering, which provides users with updates and patches to its software.

The combined company ultimately intends to bring JBoss ON and Red Hat Network together as a unified systems management offering to handle both JEMS and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, Connolly said. He didn't say when the combined product might appear, but pointed out the existing similarity between both companies' architectures and networks.

In other developments, JBoss released its Seam 1.0 framework for developing Web 2.0 applications, which brings together and integrates technologies such as Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (AJaX), JavaServer Faces, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 and business process management. The vendor also said it was extending its current certification program to include companies that use JEMS to provide hosted software services.