JBoss has introduced the JBoss Migration Program to meet growing demand from enterprises to move from costly proprietary application servers to the open source JBoss Application Server.

JBoss AS is used by 34.8 percent of enterprises that leverage application server technology, the company says, making it “the most widely used application server in the industry.”

The new migration program offers a standardized assessment and implementation methodology to ensure that enterprises can readily migrate their applications to JBoss AS and take advantage of Professional Open Source to realize total cost of ownership savings.

“JBoss is seeing growing demand from enterprises wanting to move away from vendor lock-in, expensive software licenses, costly maintenance fees and punitive annual audits common to proprietary application servers,” said Brad Murdoch, vice president of services, JBoss, Inc. “With this new migration program, JBoss is enabling more enterprises to follow in the footsteps of current JBoss customers and realize the benefits of enterprise-class open source software, services and tools while enjoying significantly lower total cost of ownership compared to commercial software.”

The JBoss Migration Assessment includes a standardized methodology for preparing an enterprise migration roadmap to streamline the migration process to JBoss AS. This specific set of processes and procedures for evaluating customer environments ensures the most cost-effective and efficient migration process.

In addition, JBoss will provide a customized set of tools to support the migration, as well as course material to train in-house administrators and developers and maintain productivity throughout the process.

JBoss CEO Marc Fleury was recently interviewed by SYS-CON.TV in his office, where he described the challenges  that the growing company faces. A survey of the JBoss community conducted by JBoss, Inc. in July 2005 found that of the 3,061 respondents reporting current usage of JBoss AS, 1,267, or 41.4 percent, have migrated applications from a commercial application server. Of this group, 290, or 22.9 percent, have migrated five or more applications. 

The majority of respondents also acknowledged a desire for enhanced services, toolkits and assessment engagements to further aid in the migration process. To serve this increasing demand, JBoss is working with its vast ecosystem of partners to provide training and certification in delivering quality migration services.

Enabling JBoss Certified System Integrators (SI) to access and support migration services gives enterprises a wide array of choices while still providing consistent and superior service. JBoss Certified SI Partners offering Migration Services today include Atos Origin, Capgemini, CIGNEX Technologies, HP, Unisys, and Valtech.

The Migration Assessment will be available as a JBoss Professional Support offering. Migration Services will be available directly from JBoss or through JBoss Certified SIs. For more about the JBoss Migration Program, developers can visit:

http://www.jboss.com/services/migration.