Table of contents

JBoss vs Weblogic vs Websphere

Enterprise architects and other IT decision makers are often faced with important decisions to make regarding the best application server / web server platform for IT. The market leaders are Websphere, Weblogic and JBoss. Here is a brief overview and comparison of each.

JBoss

JBoss is Red Hat's application server platform and comes in both open source and paid subscription versions. JBoss is the only option of the three if open source is an important consideration. The free version of JBoss called JBoss Community benefits from the open source community and has strong support in the ISV community with related technology like RichFaces. The paid license version called JBoss Enterprise supports mission critical functionality and has certified platforms. If your team is considering certain java frameworks from RedHat such as Seam, jBPM or RichFaces, JBoss should be your choice. JBoss also has strong support for Hibernate.

Weblogic

Weblogic is Oracle's application server acquired in the BEA acquisition. Weblogic has a long history very strong support for high end architecture features such as clustering and scalability. Weblogic has formed the delivered underlying application server architecture to many Oracle applications such as PeopleSoft although this is now changing with Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle has begun to rebrand Weblogic more of as a basis for application grids, a testament to its strong scalability and clustering functionality whereas Fusion Middleware is Oracle's plug and play architecture. Weblogic has the best integration with other Oracle products such as Fusion Middleware, Oracle database and Oracle applications.

Websphere

Websphere is IBM's application server. IBM offers a free WebSphere Application Server Community Edition along with an paid license Enterprise Edition. In many ways Websphere is a family of products ranging from SOA embedded server appliances to E-Commerce editions. IBM treats Websphere as a product platform supporting many product lines. Therefore Websphere is a nice choice if your needs fit a product line such as you are building an custom eCommerce website. Websphere also supports very high end architecture features such as clustering and high scalability.

Pricing Considerations

In general the choices above are listed in order of licensing cost from the lowest with JBoss to Websphere at the high end. To be fair, Websphere has more features than JBoss for the higher price. If your specific implementation need these additional features and you would have to build them, the higher end products are a good choice. Whereas if you just need a basic application server the lowest cost option can do the trick.