1. Cloud Ready Architecture – JBoss created Enterprise Application Platform 6 with the Cloud in mind from the very beginning. Based upon the first Java EE server embedded in a PaaS, the JBoss team understands what it takes to deliver enterprise capabilities everywhere. This is supported by the following new features:
   • - An updated modular architecture greatly simplifying the effort in slimming and tuning your environment wherever it may be
   • - A number of flexible management capabilities that greatly increase operational efficiency without tying your hands
   • - A highly efficient core that provides lightning fast start up times and extremely low memory footprint
3. World Class Developer Productivity – JBoss has always been about making developers more productive so they can deliver their applications quicker. EAP6 introduces a number of new features that continue to extend that leadership. This is supported by the following capabilities:
   • - Support for Java EE6 and other popular frameworks (HTML5, Spring, GWT, etc.)
   • - Major enhancements to tooling and testing through JBoss Developer Studio 5 (Also in Beta TODAY!)
   • - Support for other application lifecycle management tools such as Maven and Hudson

We encourage everyone to visit their Beta site where you can download the latest Beta build and get access to how to’s, documentation, demonstrations, and other collateral to help you get started fast.

Developer Conference was held a couple of weeks ago in Brno, Czech Republic. It’s an open conference organized by Red Hat Czech Republic every year for all Linux and JBoss Developers, Admins and Linux users. As we would say, by developers for developers. There were so many interesting talks and some very inspiring speakers.

Here below you can find all the slides collected from them.

Friday, February 17

Saturday, February 18

It’s available to all Red Hat customers with valid subscriptions at the following address: http://goo.gl/26UH6

Extraordy invites its customers to submit their projects for the Innovation Awards.

How does the Innovation Award process work?

There are seven various categories for customers and partners to submit their innovative use of Red Hat technology. A panel of judges will recognize one winning project in each of the seven categories. From these category winners, a Red Hat Innovator of the Year will be selected by the community through online voting and announced at a special awards ceremony at the Red Hat Summit and JBoss World in Boston, MA June 26-29, 2012.

2012 Innovation Award Categories include:

• Optimized Systems – This award will be presented to an organization that most successfully illustrates striking performance of an optimized system. It will highlight how Red Hat’s platform, virtualization, cloud, middleware, or storage deployment enabled proactive IT management, scalability and/or groundbreaking enhancements to your organization.
• Next Generation Business Application – This award will be presented to an organization that most successfully illustrates overall performance of creating, maintaining, and deploying a successful next generation business applications, either it be traditional, mobile or cloud, all while using Red Hat solutions.
• Outstanding Open Source Architecture – This award will be presented to an organization that most successfully illustrates the combination of Red Hat’s platform, middleware, cloud and/or storage solutions to create innovative architectures based on Red Hat solutions.
• Superior Alternatives – This award will be presented to an organization that illustrates the most successful migration from proprietary solutions to Red Hat’s platform, middleware, cloud and/or storage solutions.
• Extensive Partner Ecosystem – This award will be presented to an organization that most successfully illustrates the use of Red Hat’s expanding partner ecosystem to create innovative architectures based on Red Hat’s platform, middleware, cloud and/or storage solutions.
• Best Middleware Implementation – This award will be presented to an organization that illustrates cutting-edge utilization of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio.
• Best Storage Implementation – This award will be presented to an organization that illustrates cutting-edge utilization of Red Hat Storage software.

Terms & Conditions Nominate NOW!

Here below an excerpt:

Time For Change

For the last three years, the OSI Board has been aware of a need for change. Its mission needs a renewed expression. We decided the best way to achieve this was to switch from a Board-only organization focused largely on licensing to a member-led organization with an elected Board of facilitators. We discovered this was hard to invent, and last year eventually settled on the approach of incremental transformation. The first step of that transformation is now real. OSI now has the core of an Affiliate membership, with delegates from as many open source communities as are willing to participate. The Board has invited an initial set of Affiliates to join and collectively devise the new OSI.

What will that new OSI do? It will naturally continue stewardship of the Open Source Definition and the canonical list of approved licenses. But it will now also embrace the other parts of its mission:

• Build bridges between parts of the community, over which greater collaboration on open source can occur
• Provide a venue for that united community to speak with a unified voice when issues arise that affect us all, such as the ACTA treaty or the CPTN patent issue last year.
• Promote the understanding of open source through shared academic and advocacy activities.

Announcements

I made three important announcements which initiate that embrace:

• OSI welcomes twelve non-profit communities as the initial Affiliates for OSI (see right). They will work with the Board to devise the governance and structures of the new OSI. OSI invites all non-profit communities committed to increasing software freedom to become an OSI Affiliate. Contact the Board (osi [at] opensource.org) to explore how to join. In the future, we hope to broaden the criteria for Affiliates to allow non-incorporated community entities to affiliate too.
• We will be introducing a way for you to join OSI personally. Please take our survey so we know what you want OSI membership to include.
• We are hosting a new project to create a “Body of Knowledge” to support academic curriculum. You could join this new FLOSSBOK initiative and contribute to a central resource for educators globally.

These are just the first steps; we’ve still a long way to go. Now we have a body of Affiliates on board, I hope both that they will accelerate the Board’s progress towards change and that they will self-organise as obvious opportunities are identified. I hope we can use an “open source” approach to create a new OSI for the new decade.

Extraordy welcomes OSI’s decision of progressing governance reform to transform OSI into a member-based organisation.

Two weeks ago the guys behind JBUG Milano have organized an event at the Red Hat Milan office, inviting leading international speakers & developers to share their knowledge.

If you have not been able to attend, please find here below the slides.

• Infinispan and Enterprise Data Grid - Tristan Tarrant, Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat

If you would like to meet face-to-face with other members of the community then you can attend one of the JBug meetings in your local area. Similarly if you have something that you would like to talk about then feel free to contact your local JBug and ask to give a small presentation at the next meeting.

• JBUG Milan
• JBUG Rome

THERE’S NO HOLY WAR about it

What I always say is: Use what best fits your requests and technical challenges, but before chosing, test test test.
After you’ve seen at least more than a player, adopted because it’s “fashion”, well then you can chose with less regrets.
Actually I think that the “questions time” with other collegues attending the course, is one of the best parts because you can share experiences!
You know, We Grow As We Share as Red Hat says.

EX318:
Is the code for the exam you have to take after four days of course if you took the bundle Training+Exam (RH319).
It was challenging because it’s PRACTICAL!! No silly questions, no tricky questions, just you and the machine!!
It lasts 3hrs but I swear, the time will fly because it’s fun!
If you get certified, you’ll earn the RHCVA which stands for Red Hat Certified Virtualization Administrator.

Developed by Red Hat, OpenShift aims to redefine the PaaS market by providing a new level of choice in languages, frameworks and clouds for developers to build, test, run and manage their applications.  Building on Red Hat’s extensive expertise, OpenShift leads the PaaS market with innovative features extending the capabilities of PaaS to richer and more demanding applications.

Building on Red Hat’s open source leadership, OpenShift is designed to end the lock-in of PaaS, allowing users to choose the cloud provider upon which their application will run.

It  delivers greater flexibility than any other PaaS, by supporting more development frameworks for Java, Python, PHP and Ruby, including Spring, Seam, Weld, CDI, Rails, Rack, Symfony, Zend Framework, Twisted, Django and Java EE.  It includes both SQL and NoSQL data stores and a distributed file system.  By building on the Deltacloud cloud interoperability standard, OpenShift is designed to allow developers to run their applications on any supported Red Hat Certified Public Cloud Provider, eliminating the lock-in associated with first-generation PaaS vendors.

Currently there are two application deployment services offered as part of OpenShift: Express & Flex.

TRY OpenShift Express for FREE!Express is a free, cloud-based application platform for Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby applications delivered in a shared-hosting model. With just a few commands you’ll be able to deploy your application to the cloud.

Sign up to TRY Flex!Flex is a browser-based platform-as-a-service for Java and PHP applications with auto-scaling, performance monitoring and application management capabilities built-in. You can provide your Amazon EC2 credentials in order to authorize OpenShift Flex to deploy cloud servers on your behalf OR take advantage of Red Hat’s free trial offer. The free trial includes 30 days or 30 hours (whichever comes first) of free cloud resources from Amazon EC2.

Over the coming weeks, we will be posting a series of tutorials to help you get started with OpenShift!

In line with our strategy to increase customer engagement, Extraordy has reinforced its presence on the major social media platforms. Starting from today, you can find us on Facebook and Google+ or follow us on Twitter.

Over the coming weeks, we will be updating the site regularly with news as well as announcing many exciting projects we’re currently working on! So add us to your bookmarks and check back regularly!

Today, we’re very excited to announce three talented additions to Extraordy:

Giovanni Capone : Giovanni joins the company as Chief Operating Officer (COO) — responsible for aligning strategic goals and operational activities, the optimization of day-to-day operations and back-office functions. Most recently Services Delivery Manager for Red Hat,  Giovanni has been deeply involved with open source for the past decade, and has been at the forefront of uncovering novel business models to monetize open source software.

Oscar Zullini: Oscar joins the company as Red Hat Certified Instructor / Examiner. He will support our training efforts, which is a key element of our overall corporate strategy. Professionally, Oscar trained more than 200 Students in 50+ Red Hat Officials Trainings and 28 Exams between Italy, Bulgaria and Belgium. Prior to joining Extraordy, he has held the same role at Red Hat for two years.

Gianluca Varisco: Gianluca joins the company as Solution Architect – responsible for positioning and orchestrating Open Source technologies and services in relation to customer business problems and technology challenges. He will oversee cloud, automation and infrastructure projects from pre-sales, technical implementation and project management perspective. Prior to joining Extraordy, he has held technical roles at Bravofly SA, PrivateWave Italia S.p.A and Red Hat.

Please give them a warm welcome and stay tuned for more exciting news :-)