Be aware that a stateless session bean is not always a stateless
object !

Stateless in this context mean that multiple calls from the same
client may be served by different bean objects.

The bean objects can still have state even though the benefits
is limited due to the above.

Arne

Thanks Arne and Daniel for your inputs.

I hope the following code snippet could explain my scenario better. I
have a Object locator method which based on config properties, does a
EJB look up for home object or a POJO instantiation and provides the
Object back.

While doing so, it also places the object reference in a HashMap for
future use.
Now I am not sure if this would be tread safe with the entire class
being a singleton class.

if (businessServices.get(taskId) != null) {
    obj    = businessServices.get(taskId);
}else{
            /String serviceType =
(String)configInfo.get(CommonConstants.ATTR_SERVICE_TYPE);

    //if the business service is of JNDI type , it will proceed in the
else part
        if((serviceType != null) &&
(serviceType.equals(CommonConstants.ATTR_JNDI))){
               Context initialContext = new InitialContext(env);
               obj =   initialContext.lookup(jndiName);
    Class clazz = Class.forName(homeClass) ;
    Object home = (EJBHome) PortableRemoteObject.narrow(obj, clazz);
    obj = home;
    businessServices.put(taskId, obj);

        }else if ((serviceType != null) &&
(serviceType.equals(CommonConstants.ATTR_POJO))){
    obj = Class.forName(className);
    businessServices.put(taskId, obj);
        }
 return obj;
}