JBoss Enterprise Application Platform

The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is a subscription-based/open-source Java EE-based application server runtime platform used for building, deploying, and hosting highly-transactional Java applications and services developed and maintained by Red Hat. The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is part of Red Hat's Enterprise Middleware portfolio of software. Because it is Java-based, the JBoss application server operates across platforms; it is usable on any operating system that supports Java. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was originally called JBoss and was developed by the eponymous company JBoss, acquired by Red Hat in 2006.
Summer 2025, Red Hat announced that the JBoss and similar product lines and support contracts will remain at Red Hat, but the middleware development team would move to parent company IBM - and come under the same management as the WebSphere development team.

Product components and features

Red Hat's latest JBoss EAP version is 7, with Cumulative Patches 2 and Cumulative Patches 3.
Key features:

Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment is available using JBoss Developer Studio
Supports Java EE and Web Services standards
Enterprise Java Beans
Java persistence using Hibernate
Object request broker using JacORB for interoperability with CORBA objects
JBoss Seam framework, including Java annotations to enhance POJOs, and including JBoss jBPM
JavaServer Faces, including RichFaces
Web application services, including Apache Tomcat for JavaServer Pages and Java Servlets
Caching, clustering, and high availability, are provided by the subsystem Infinispan
EJB that includes JNDI and RMI
Security services, including Java Authentication and Authorization Service and pluggable authentication modules
Web Services and interoperability, including JAX-RPC, JAX-WS, many WS-* standards, and MTOM/XOP
Integration and messaging services, including J2EE Connector Architecture, Java Database Connectivity, and Java Message Service
Management and Service-Oriented Architecture using Java Management Extensions
Additional administration and monitoring features are available using JBoss Operations Network

Key components:

JBoss Application Server, the framework used to support the development and implementation of applications
Hibernate, an object/relational mapping and persistence framework
JBoss Seam, a framework for building web applications
JBoss Web Framework Kit, for building Java applications

Lists of components, features, and standards supported are available.

Licensing and pricing

JBoss itself is free and open-source, but Red Hat charges to provide a support subscription for JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat allows the use of JBoss EAP for development, but to obtain support in production a support subscription is required and customizations are not supported.

Related products

These products are part of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio of software, or are included with the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform software.JBoss Enterprise Web Platform
This software is a lighter weight version of the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. The key components are essentially the same as the full JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, but uses a slimmed down profile of the JBoss Application Server.
Lists of components and standards supported are available.JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform
This software is an enterprise portal with the core portal features of presentation, master page objects, containers, and a repository, and also an optional site publisher.
Key components:

* JBoss Enterprise Application Platform – the software infrastructure
* GateIn Portal – both an enterprise web portal and also a portal framework to build upon. GateIn Portal includes support for Web Services for Remote Portlets, Java Content Repository, Single Sign-On, and OpenSocial gadgets.
* JBoss Portlet Bridge – a non-final draft implementation of the JSR-301 and JSR-329 specifications that support JavaServer Faces within a JSR-286 portlet. This software also supports other web frameworks such as JBoss Seam and RichFaces to run inside a portlet.
* Site Publisher – web content management JBoss Enterprise Web Server
This software is a platform for lightweight Java applications, but also handles large scale websites. JBoss EWS may be deployed as a standard enterprise web server, a simple Java application server, or an enterprise open source application infrastructure.
Key components:
* Apache Tomcat – including Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages
* Apache Web Server – including common modules and connectors for authentication, caching, proxying, filtering, and load balancing JBoss Web Framework Kit
This software is a set of web frameworks used for building light and rich Java applications.
Components:
* Google Web Toolkit – framework for rich Internet applications
* RichFaces – framework for rich Internet applications
* Spring Framework – Java framework
* Apache Struts – Java frameworkJBoss Cache
This software implements a cache for frequently accessed Java objects to improve application performance. The cache can be replicated and transactional. The cache can be replicated across one or more Java Virtual Machines across a network. The cache can be transactional because a JTA compliant transaction manager can be configured and make any cache interaction transactional. The two types of JBoss Cache are Core and POJO, with the POJO library built on top the Core library.JBoss Netty
This software is a New I/O client-server framework for the development of Java network applications such as protocol servers and clients. The asynchronous event-driven network application framework and tools is used to simplify network programming such as TCP and UDP socket servers. Netty includes an implementation of the reactor pattern of programming.