IBM WebSphere Application Server delivers a set of new features and functions that extend the capabilities provided in Version 8.5.5, and offer enhancements to the Liberty profile and full profile for development and production environments. Many of these new features can be optionally installed from the WebSphere Liberty Repository. They can be used along with those already available through WebSphere Liberty Repository. For features that were previously announced through the continuous delivery stream, refer to Software Announcement 214-184, dated April 22, 2014.

New features of the WebSphere Application Server Liberty profile (WebSphere Liberty) provide significant enhancements in terms of developer experience and high-end resiliency:

• For developers, new programming models and tools offer an enhanced developer experience to accelerate the pace of delivery of engaging applications.
• For administrators and businesses, new Intelligent Management and security features can help lower the administrative overhead of managing, scaling, and securing servers.

These features, in conjunction with the ever-growing list of available choices to deploy WebSphere Application Server applications in cloud environments, offer a optimal environment for your business applications. WebSphere Liberty not only brings agility and responsiveness to enterprise IT, but also provides fuel for innovation and growth to enterprises in their quest to deliver engaging applications in cloud and mobile environments.

Enhancements to WebSphere Liberty include:

• Java EE 7 compliant programming model support for WebSockets 1.0 (JSR 356) and Servlet 3.1 (JSR 340) to enrich applications with responsive dynamic content
• Additional Java EE 7 components in support of APIs for processing JSON (JavaScript™ Object Notation) data (JSR 353) and Concurrency utilities (JSR 236)
• Auto-scaling capabilities to dynamically adjust the number of Java virtual machines (JVMs) that are based on workload and auto-routing to intelligently manage your workload. This provides operational agility and decreases administrative overhead to enhance the resiliency of your middleware environment.
• Improved operational efficiency of large-scale, clustered deployments of tens of thousands of Java virtual machines (JVMs) in a Liberty Collective
• Configurable, global Web Service handlers for extending and customizing payloads to Web Service applications.
• REST connector for non-Java clients to extend client access to Java Management Extensions (JMX) administration infrastructure through a RESTful API.
• Simplified configuration processing for feature developers to enable customization of WebSphere Application Server Liberty profile capabilities.
• Enhancement to the distributed security model using OpenID and OpenID Connect to simplify the task of authenticating users across multiple trust domains.
• Enhancement to WebSphere Liberty Administrative Center for usability and management of large collectives of application servers.
• Enhancement to WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit - Liberty Tech Preview includes new binary scanning capability to quickly evaluate applications for rapid deployment on WebSphere Liberty.

Find out more here.