Bluestone Announces Major Release of Sapphire/Web

Bluestone Software Inc. announced
today Sapphire/Web Release 5, network management tools for large-scale
enterprises.

The product has been significantly extended and restructured into a five-part
product family including the core Sapphire/Universal Business Server,
Sapphire/Application Manager, the well-known Sapphire/Developer,
Sapphire/Enterprise Deployment Kit, and Sapphire/Integration Modules (SIM) for
native data integration.

Bluestone’s “Web-server” products enable hardware servers to host Web
interfaces
and applications. Bluestone’s Sapphire/Web complements Web servers by
providing a framework that enables the smooth integration of an
enterprise’s existing business applications with the Web environment.

Sapphire/Web provides a smart management environment that lets IS
managers monitor and control application functioning, and powerful
development environments for building custom integrations, as well as
new Web applications. All these services and more are included in
Bluestone’s focus of Enterprise Interaction Management.

Sapphire/Web’s purpose is to enable enterprises to optimize business by
leveraging the Web. It is architected to be the open, business-application
“hub” of a Web-centric network. Designed for large-scale environments, the
framework:

• enables the direct back-end integration of any legacy application, in its
  native language
  
• allows distributed, real-time, load balancing, yet also enabling
  central-point
  control
  
• can run applications in separate partitions for security and stability
  
• deploys applications in Java for hardware platform independence, and
  includes a comprehensive management console, reports, and services
  
• enables rapid application development for speed to market
  
• can integrate any front-end Web client or user-interface environment and
  applications built in any business-standard software language.
  

The entire product line will be fully available in April 1998, with
additional SIM modules being delivered on a continual basis. Initial
training is included and required with all product configurations.

Release 5 will be priced according to a “pay-per-usage” model tied to the
volume of server interactions–the best paradigm for the Web-network era.

“Bluestone has driven a stake in the ground by introducing this new
pricing paradigm,” said Philip Costa, industry analyst with Giga
Information Group. “By charging customers for only the capacity they
use, not the hardware, they have moved beyond the technology-centric
model to a business-centric model.”