ActiveGrid Releases Open Source Grid Application Server

SAN FRANCISCO, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- ActiveGrid, Inc., a commercial open source software company, today announced the early-access release of the company's next-generation enterprise application platform. The ActiveGrid(TM) Application Builder and Grid Application Server are now available for download under the popular open source Apache Software License 2.0. Built on the proven LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) software stack, the ActiveGrid platform is designed to scale business applications across horizontal grids of commodity computers -- accelerating composite application development, reducing cost, and enabling customization at runtime. Developers can access and install the product code by downloading the application today at http://www.activegrid.com/developergrid.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20041117/SFW068LOGO ) Three Trends Converging toward the Service-Driven Enterprise

Businesses are evolving with a mix of agility, cost savings, and new services. Forward-thinking companies like Google, Amazon, and Sabre have shifted to the service-driven enterprise based on three technology trends: XML, open source, and grid computing. These technologies are enabling unprecedented levels of new service creation and cost savings. Until now, this approach has required handcrafted design by in-house experts. ActiveGrid has now productized these best practices so all enterprises can enjoy these benefits.

"The LAMP platform offers a low-cost and highly productive programming environment, particularly for XML-based applications. But without a LAMP- enabled application server, only the most technologically advanced companies are able to make these systems Internet-scalable," said Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group, an industry analyst firm. "A grid-based application server architecture makes highly scalable LAMP technology accessible to the average IT organization, and it enables automatic distribution of application load across a farm of low-cost commodity hardware."

To date, grids have been used primarily for specialized research and scientific applications. ActiveGrid board member Mitchell Kertzman, of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, explains, "The transaction grid is the latest evolution of grid computing. It clusters up to thousands of horizontally scaled commodity computers that work together to handle mainstream business applications. A transaction grid hosts all applications as Web Services, simplifying the development of composite applications and enabling them to be deployed, scaled, and managed across a grid. This innovative approach reaps huge cost savings when compared with traditional application server deployment." Open Source Release Targets Corporate and Independent Developers

ActiveGrid users are developing and deploying service-driven enterprise applications for transaction-intensive industries, such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, business and consumer services, and manufacturing. "ActiveGrid is excited to provide leading-edge technologies to corporate and independent developers," comments Peter Yared, founder and CEO of ActiveGrid. "After almost two years of development, we feel our early-access release will give developers an opportunity to rapidly develop applications on the LAMP platform." Today's early-access open source release comprises the following: ActiveGrid Application Builder

The ActiveGrid Application Builder is a rapid application

development environment based on a native XML programming model that

enables developers to graphically and iteratively create, test, and

deploy composite enterprise applications. It supports key XML

standards such as XML Schema (business objects), XPath (database

queries), BPEL (business process), and XForms (user interface

rendering). This declarative approach enables the scaling of

mainstream business applications across a transaction grid, and

supports PHP, Python, Perl, and Java programming languages. The

Application Builder is designed to run on top of Windows(R), Linux,

and Macintosh(TM) clients. ActiveGrid Grid Application Server

The ActiveGrid Grid Application Server is an application deployment

platform designed to scale applications across horizontal grids of

commodity computers. In contrast to traditional three-tiered

architectures, where statically defined applications are bound to a

particular deployment architecture, the Grid Application Server

interprets applications at runtime and can deploy them using a

variety of proven deployment models and multiple data caching

patterns. The Grid Application Server is implemented as an Apache

Module running on the Linux operating system and is designed to

scale linearly to up to 1,024-node grids. Yared, a well-known industry veteran and former CTO of the Application Server Division of Sun Microsystems, says, "Our approach will liberate the corporate developer who, in the past, could attend a two-week training course and immediately be able to develop enterprise applications. With the advent of complex application server architectures like J2EE, which rigidly coupled development with deployment, those days of high productivity are virtually gone. ActiveGrid enables developers to rapidly create applications with flexible deployment options that scale far better than the current crop of handcrafted applications."

ActiveGrid addresses this innovation gap by adhering to XML industry standards to simplify interoperability and eliminate vendor lock-in. A developer can download the Application Builder and be up and running within 15 minutes, thanks to its integrated Web server and database for rapid, iterative development. Mainstream corporate developers no longer have to be concerned with choosing a particular deployment architecture before writing an application, freeing them to focus their energies where they have the greatest impact -- application and service creation. Applications can be deployed at thousands of Internet Service Providers that host the LAMP platform as well as to internal grids of commodity computers. Product Availability

Early-access versions of the ActiveGrid Application Builder and Grid Application Server are available immediately through an Apache 2.0 open source license. For additional features and information, or to download the product code, visit http://www.activegrid.com/developergrid. ActiveGrid plans to introduce a commercially licensed, data center-grade version of the Grid Application Server in the second half of 2005. ActiveGrid will offer fee- based, enterprise-class support and consulting services for all versions. About ActiveGrid

ActiveGrid, a commercial open source software company, has created the Grid Application Server, a next-generation enterprise development and deployment platform. ActiveGrid's native XML application platform harnesses the proven open source LAMP stack to enable organizations to deploy and scale business applications across "transaction grids" of horizontally scaled commodity computers. The ActiveGrid solution gives organizations the ability to rapidly integrate existing backend systems to create new composite service driven applications, customize transactions at runtime, and reap the economic benefits of open source commodity computing. Please see http://www.activegrid.com for more information. ActiveGrid(TM) is either a trademark or registered trademark of ActiveGrid, Inc. All other product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.