Covad Communications Slashes Costs and Improves Time-to-Market with JBoss Enterprise Middleware

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Covad Communications, a leading provider of integrated voice and data communications, has saved more than $500,000 annually by migrating to JBoss Enterprise Middleware to power its mission-critical infrastructure. Covad Communications has integrated the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, SOA Platform and JBoss Operations Network in its transition from inflexible and costly proprietary middleware software and hardware to cut costs while speeding new broadband/VoIP products to market.

As a broadband specialist and pioneer, Covad was the first vendor to commercially deploy DSL in the United States. It owns the largest broadband network in the country, and is the only provider of data, voice and wireless telecommunications solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with a nationwide DSL footprint. A major supplier of broadband access for companies like Earthlink, AOL and AT&T, Covad offers its services to more than 57 million homes and businesses to 235 major markets in 44 states.

"In the current challenging economic situation, it is very important for Covad to retain its edge in automated Operations Support Systems while reducing the software support costs. We needed to modernize our SOA and roll out new products, all the while doing a new software rollout every six weeks and maintaining 99.9 percent uptime. That's why we love JBoss - it allows us to do more with less," said Unmesh Kulkarni, director of Software Architecture and Delivery, Covad Communications Group, Inc. "Not only does JBoss give us exactly what we need now, it provides us with choices going into the future."

Previously, Covad was using proprietary middleware software running on proprietary hardware to manage the complex billing and operational support systems (BSS/OSS) that support Covad's broadband wholesale and retail customers.

But Covad increasingly found the licensing terms of the proprietary software inflexible, inhibiting its ability to add new functionality to its existing systems, develop new ones, and scale to meet market demands. Covad Communications turned to open source solutions to combat these issues and has deployed JBoss Enterprise Application Platform which offered the value and performance that their system demands.

"JBoss Enterprise Application Platform offered everything we needed in a technology platform: it offered superior performance; a full range of functionality; high-quality support; and was reasonably priced," said Kulkarni. "We're saving $500,000 per year by deploying JBoss. My executives love the fact that our invoices are going down every quarter."

Today, Covad has about 400 x86 and SPARC machines running JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, and 32 CPUs running JBoss Operations Network, an integrated management platform that simplifies the development, testing, deployment and monitoring of JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

The software division recently designed and deployed a new JBoss-based voice over IP (VoIP) solution within four months. "We moved from concept to product within this extraordinarily tight timeframe - something we could never have done with our proprietary middleware," said Kulkarni.

JBoss Operations Network (JON) allows Covad to improve operational efficiency and reliability through thorough visibility into production availability and performance and effectively manage configuration with a single, integrated tool.

Looking forward, Covad is currently working on a very aggressive new product roll-out for 2009, primarily in the form of providing customers with Internet-based network services delivered "in the cloud." JBoss provides Covad with a much more flexible approach to support this growth.

"We're looking at the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform to implement business rules and process models, and at JBoss Seam as deep Web integration platform," said Kulkarni. "Whatever we do, JBoss is certain to be a core part of our efforts."

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Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for four consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

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