JBoss®, Inc., the Professional Open Source company, today announced the release of JBoss Transactions, an open source distributed transaction management platform based on industry-proven technology acquired from Arjuna Technologies and HP in 2005.

This release marks the first time that a high-end transaction engine has been made available for free and unlimited use through the open source community. JBoss Transactions, one of several core products announced today, builds on JBoss' vision of bringing enterprise middleware to the mass market and further strengthens the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS(tm)) as the leading open source platform for service-oriented architectures (SOA).

Distributed transaction management platforms were previously only available from proprietary vendors as part of an expensive, monolithic application platform. JBoss Transactions, built using industry proven pure Java transaction technology, is a flexible and cost-effective high end alternative. Distributed transactions appeal to enterprises in sectors such as insurance, telecommunications, and financial services where the ability to ensure business transaction integrity and 'five-nines' availability is paramount. Similar to an insurance policy, JBoss Transactions protects users and vendors from potential transaction failures related to the accuracy and consistency of business data that is created or modified by multiple sources. For example, JBoss Transactions ensures a purchase is executed without failure by immediately reconciling data in distributed sources such as sales, accounting and shipping databases.

"The need for business agility drives the technology requirements of today's IT departments," said Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management, JBoss Inc. "JBoss delivers proven open source technology that advances the goals of SOA without adding complexity. JBoss Transactions, which is based on one of the most mature distributed transaction management engines on the market, provides enterprise customers with an option that plugs into any standards-based environment offering the advantages of cost, quality and flexibility for which JEMS are recognised." Bringing the Power of Distributed Transactions to Open Source

In December 2005, JBoss acquired the Arjuna Transaction Service Suite and the Arjuna Web Services Transaction implementation, the only implementation supporting both leading Web services specifications-Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) and Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF). The JBoss product comprises all of these technologies and is being released as JBoss Transactions 4.2.

JBoss Transactions can be used as a stand-alone transaction manager or as an embedded distributed service inside the JBoss Application Server to take advantage of benefits such as load balancing, high availability, and fault tolerance. JBoss Transactions is written in 100 percent pure Java and runs on any hardware and operating system with a compatible Java virtual machine.

JBoss Transactions supports traditional ACID (atomic, consistent, isolated and durable) transactions using two-phase commit coordination and complete distributed crash recovery. With JBoss Transactions, organisations can deliver accurate business transactions to their customers, ensuring high levels of service in their daily operations.

Key Features and Functionality
* Provides seamless integration with the JBoss Application Server for a highly cost effective application deployment platform and support for end-to-end transactions, allowing Web services transactions to integrate with J2EE application servers, messaging systems and database back-ends.
* Handles high transaction volume across client/server, Internet, mobile and wireless, SOA and event-driven architectures using CORBA, J2EE or web services.
* Assures data integrity using the two-phase commit protocol for ensuring that all transaction participants (databases, message queues etc.) are updated or rolled back consistently despite any component failures.
* Supports all standard and optional features defined in the J2EE Java Transaction API (JTA) and Java Transaction Service (JTS) specifications.
* Interoperates with the leading Web Services Transactions specifications including WS-Coordination, WS-AtomicTransaction, and WS-BusinessActivity.
* Provides transactional persistence and concurrency control to plain old Java objects (POJOs), enabling transactional POJOs to participate in the same transaction with databases and other resource managers.

Availability
JBoss Transactions is licensed under the open source GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free to download and use for both development and production deployments. Additional information and product downloads are available at http://www.jboss.com/products/transactions.

Support and Services
JBoss provides a full range of support, training and consulting services for JBoss Transactions delivered by the product experts. JBoss Subscriptions which include 24x7 production support, indemnification and access to JBoss Operations Network (JBoss ON(tm)) are available directly from JBoss, Inc. or through the company's extensive network of JBoss Certified Partners. For more information, please visit http://www.jboss.com/services/index.

About JBoss, Inc.
JBoss, Inc., the global leader in open source middleware, offers simply the better way to transform businesses through a service-oriented architecture (SOA). As the leading open source platform for SOA, JEMS (JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite) delivers proven performance in mission-critical environments and is backed by world-class support and service-all at a dramatically lower cost structure than proprietary systems. Fortune 500 companies such as Continental Airlines, MCI and Starwood Hotels & Resorts rely on Professional Open Source from JBoss, Inc. Certified partners offering JEMS and JBoss Subscriptions include Dell, HP, NEC, Novell, Sun Microsystems and Unisys. For more information, visit http://www.jboss.com.

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JBoss and JEMS are registered trademarks or trademarks of JBoss, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks herein are property of their respective owners.