Open Source in the Application Server Market

Use of open source in the application server market is strong and users can consider the best of the open source application servers as viable alternatives to the leading closed-source offerings for most mainstream projects. Users are often compelled to acquire AS technology that significantly exceeds their functional requirements just because the leading vendors only offer "fully loaded" product options. Users are also pressured to pay more as their applications increase in transaction volume and require additional CPU licenses. The open-source alternative can address both of these challenges:
• Most open-source AS products use a micro-kernel-style internal architecture (also known as "SOA inside"), enabling users to deploy only the required subset of the AS product.
• The costs of an open-source offerings are structured as a support subscription and typically are not linearly dependent on the number of CPUs used.

Most users deploy their open-source AS along with the already established closed-source alternatives, taking advantage of the standards-based compatibility and allowing incremental savings and a gradual transition to open source. Application ISVs are frequent users of the opensource AS as the default foundation for their applications: it reduces their costs and the costs for their customers, while delivering required qualities of service to most packaged application scenarios. Users that never considered an open-source AS may still be using it just because it came inside of a purchased application. Significantly today, and even more in the future, most business software users are and will be affected by the changes in open-source AS technologies and business practices.