Success story

Red Hat Training helps State of Tennessee deploy new middleware solution

The State of Tennessee Office of Information Resources (OIR) selected Red Hat® JBoss® Middleware solutions to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase performance, flexibility, and availability of resources.

Customer Since

2008

Nashville, Tennessee

Government industry

Objective

End inflexible licensing terms of proprietary middleware, add functions to IT systems, and find a cheaper alternative.

Software

Hardware

  • Existing State of Tennessee OIR architecture

After completing the Red Hat JBoss Middleware training class, I felt prepared and equipped to maximize our use of JBoss solutions and better understand, maintain, and troubleshoot our middleware environment.

James Elkins, team lead for middleware, business intelligence and testing, OIR, State of Tennessee

Learning a new middleware technology

The State of Tennessee used proprietary middleware software for its middleware environment, but found the licensing terms of the software to be inflexible, inhibiting its ability to add new functionality to its existing systems, develop new ones, and scale to meet market demands.

Additionally, the proprietary system was expensive. "We were spending a lot of money supporting these solutions, and in order to scale for our growth, we knew we needed to find a cheaper alternative, without compromising quality and performance," said James Elkins, team lead for middleware, business intelligence and testing, OIR, State of Tennessee.

Though the state's experience with open source middleware solutions was limited, it decided to migrate to the more cost-effective and flexible platform offered by open source solutions in a virtualized environment.

OIR selected Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) in a virtualized environment for its middleware solution, alongside Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which the OIR had already been using.

Because the team had no previous experience with Red Hat JBoss Middleware solutions, it turned to Red Hat Training to help the team members get up to speed quickly.

Getting up to speed quickly with Red Hat Training

After attending a Red Hat Training class for JBoss Middleware, combined with existing Java programming experience, the team found JBoss Middleware to be easy to use, manage, and deploy. The state plans to send additional staff members to Red Hat Training for Red Hat JBoss Middleware in the near future.

"The JBoss Middleware training class was delivered using comprehensive use-case scenarios and featured hands-on labs, which provided the skills and knowledge necessary to handle our organization’s JBoss Middleware workloads," said James Elkins, team lead for middleware, business intelligence and testing, OIR, State of Tennessee.

The confidence to migrate to Red Hat JBoss

One of the distinct advantages of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is that it enables ease of use for development. The solution integrates easily with each of the custom applications that support the state agencies.

The platform has enabled significant efficiency as the team is now able to manage and monitor the performance of applications. The time required for start up with the new JBoss-based system has been reduced considerably. Now, with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, the team can quickly and easily add new servers to its architecture.

"As we migrate more and more of the state agencies' custom applications to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, the provisioning and deployment time has been reduced from 6 months to a matter of days," said Tricia Kitchens, director of enterprise services, OIR, State of Tennesee. "JBoss has allowed us to do more with less, increase our reliability, and allowed us to increase the service we provide to our citizens."

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