We've been choosing a new app server platform to standardize our infrastructure on, and the choices we were working with were JBoss and Oracle's OiAS.

Stipulations were as follows:

1) Must be a supported app server for CF Enterprise and Flex on Solaris.
2) Must have commercially viable support options.

On the one hand, we just bought Oracle's Enterprise Management console (previously branded the "Grid Control" tools) to manage our databases, and it does a nice job administrating the app server too. This makes it really compelling to stay with Oracle's server so our DBAs can manage the whole kit and caboodle from one place. On the down side, Oracle's app server tends to lag behind in JDK versions, and support for CF Enterprise on Solaris is no longer available for this product.

JBoss is free, highly configurable, lightweight, and stays up to date with JDK versions. You can get commercial support from Red Hat (for a pittance compared to our other enterprise support contracts). On the down side, the admin consoles are pretty bare-bones.

So, I did a little Googling today, and what do you know - Oracle has a plugin for Enterprise Manager to let it monitor JBoss instances and give you almost the same level of administration as you get with Oracle's native server.

I'm not sure what's left to debate on which server to go with, but I'll know after I talk to Larry (our DBA team manager) on Monday.