IBM announced Tuesday a new member of its WebSphere application server family: the WebSphere Application Server Community Edition.

WAS CE (WebSphere Application Server Community Edition) is built on the Apache Software Foundation’s Geronimo open-source application server and includes code from Gluecode Software.

IBM acquired Gluecode last May.

WAS CE also includes IBM’s Cloudscape database, which is based on the open-source Apache Derby Project.

The end result is a J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) application server, which IBM means to be a flexible and affordable alternative to traditional commercial software offerings and can help customers begin to deploy an SOA (service-oriented architecture).

Specifically, according to Scott Cosby, the IBM Transition Executive in charge of integrating Gluecode into IBM, it’s designed for midsize businesses and enterprise departments with access to open-source-based technologies with no upfront costs.

Source: eWeek