What you need to know about WebSphere Hybrid Edition

IBM WebSphere Hybrid Edition is a bundle of IBM runtimes for enterprise and cloud-native Java workloads. WebSphere Hybrid Edition enables developers to flexibly deploy both WebSphere traditional runtimes and Liberty runtimes (including the open-source Open Liberty framework), depending on their needs while optimizing the use of WebSphere Network Deployment, WebSphere Application Server, and Liberty Core license entitlements.

WebSphere Application Server traditional is a trusted application server for Java EE applications. Liberty is a fast, lightweight, and modular framework for cloud-native Java applications and microservices that are optimized for cloud and Kubernetes and supporting a wide spectrum of Java APIs, including the latest Eclipse MicroProfile and Jakarta EE API.

With WebSphere Hybrid Edition, you can continue to run workloads on WebSphere Application Server traditional reliably, build new services on Liberty and deploy them to cloud, and modernize and refactor your legacy applications whenever you’re ready at your own pace. The choices are yours.

What does WebSphere Hybrid Edition offer developers?

Liberty, which is available through WebSphere Hybrid Edition, is designed for developers. Its dev mode (with container support too!) enables developers to focus on their code and iterate fast. You don’t have to compile and deploy manually; you can simply save your changes and right away test your code. Liberty’s dev mode also makes it easy for you to run automated tests (continuously and automatically) during coding, and you can attach a debugger anytime to trace through your code. With dev mode, you can easily work with Liberty from the command line or from any editor or IDE of your choice.

Liberty provides tool support for popular editors or IDEs like Eclipse IDE, IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code (VS Code). Moreover, Liberty integrates popular technologies that you’re already using from build tools like Maven and Gradle, test tools like JUnit and Arquillian, to the Central Repository and Docker Hub for Liberty artifacts and images. WebSphere Hybrid Edition also provides support for WebSphere Developer Tools and Liberty Developer Tools that you use to build applications for WebSphere Application Server and Liberty.

Does WebSphere Hybrid Edition offer tools for modernization?

Yes, WebSphere Hybrid Edition offers a suite of tools to support and speed up your application modernization journey.

• IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor discovers and analyzes on-premises Java EE and messaging workloads and provides recommendations on optimal paths for modernization including estimates on development efforts.

• WebSphere Application Migration Toolkit assists developers to make code changes to modernize their Java applications from updating Java SE versions, Java EE versions to moving to Liberty.

• Mono2Micro uses AI to help you transform your monolithic applications into microservices. It offers suggestions on microservice partitions to consider based on business use cases, and it also generates microservice code that you can use as a starting point to speed up your refactoring efforts.

Want more?

Want to learn more about WebSphere Hybrid Edition?

Watch Ed McCabe provide an overview of WebSphere Hybrid Edition in this IBM Expert TV episode.

Or, explore the articles, tutorials, code patterns, and more about the components of WebSphere Hybrid Edition in the WebSphere Hybrid Edition hub on IBM Developer.