Red Hat has announced new integration capabilities for SAP solutions as part of The JBoss Way, a "branded" development approach designed to provide programmers with a more productive and simple way to develop modern applications.

Introduced in June 2012, The JBoss Way encompasses a new set of frameworks, tools, and architectural designs focused on improving developer productivity in building modern applications for mobile and the cloud.

The collaboration is an effort to enhance interoperability and productivity between Red Hat and SAP solutions. Essentially, the firms are working to provide capabilities that make it easier to consume SAP application data and business processes from Red Hat's JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, JBoss Enterprise Data Services Platform, or JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

What Is A "Modern" Application?

NOTE: While use of the term "modern applications" might appear slightly woolly and non-specific, previous comment on Dr. Dobb's has detailed The Seven Virtues of Modern Applications as they might reasonably be defined. In the shadow of the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft also appears to be somewhat keen on the term.

This Red Hat &endash; SAP integration will be carried out via SAP NetWeaver Gateway technology, which exists to connect devices, environments, and platforms to SAP software based on open standards. It offers connectivity to SAP applications using any programming language or model (without the need for knowledge of SAP solutions) by leveraging REST services and OData and/or ATOM protocols.

"The long-standing collaboration between Red Hat and SAP is thriving, and integration between technologies from both companies is a great example of what The JBoss Way was designed for," said Craig Muzilla, vice president and general manager, Middleware, Red Hat. "The aim of this integration is a more intelligent, integrated enterprise — one that can maximize the value of data assets and accelerate business decisions. Ultimately, our goal is to enable developers to innovate faster and create transformative applications that have real business impact."

"SAP and Red Hat both support open standards, such as HTML5, REST, and OData and frequently join forces in standards-based consortia," said Adi Kavalar, vice president, Product Management, SAP. "The support of SAP solutions in the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio — for consuming SAP NetWeaver Gateway-provisioned, REST-based OData services — underscores our cooperation in the open community and is a welcome and encouraging step for customers and developers."

Red Hat rounds out by saying that the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio features a suite of development tooling to construct customer Java applications, including those that extract data from SAP NetWeaver.