New battlefield for OSS middleware

Who doesn't want to crack the rising Asian market? China for example is the place where all businesses would love to make it. With all the cash they have and a fast growing middle class, China's buying power is very attractive. All this is obvious but what's kind of new is the attention Asia is getting from the open source world. Red Hat has opened a new office in Beijing late last year while Novell is pushing their Linux distribution in China via the local China Linux Standards Group.

How about OSS Middleware?
Earlier this month I wrote a piece on ObjectWeb's partnership with the powerful Guangzhou Middleware Research Center (GMRC) to increase the adoption of JonAS in China. The ObjectWeb consortium is also sponsoring Vietnam's COSGov conference on use of open source in e-government. All this was happening when JBoss was busy trying to figure out what impact was IBM's acquisition of Gluecode going to have on them. But JBoss couldn't ignore ObjectWeb's attempt to conquer the Asian market, they came out with a similar announcement today. JBoss is teaming up with Nomura Research Institute (NRI) to promote deployments of JBoss's Enterprise Middleware System (JEMS), making JEMS a "safe choice" for Asian enterprise customers. "This partnership with NRI is a crucial step in our expansion into Asia. As Japan's largest consulting firm and system integrator, NRI has the breadth and depth to help JBoss extend JEMS to countless enterprises across the continent." said Bob Bickel, VP of strategy and corporate development with JBoss. NRI will provide professional support, systems integration and management services while JBoss will provide NRI with development support, training and professional certification. Earlier this month JBoss opened its India office in Bangalore.

After a clear victory for JBoss in the US and a little more disputed competition in EU, let's see how the OSS middleware battle plays out in Asia. Keep in mind that even a small success in Asia (especially China) can grow JBoss or JonAS’s community by millions of fresh users.