Persistence Software introduced a
new application server technology called PowerTier, saying that it
accelerates standard Web and client/server applications “by factors of 10
to over 100 times.”
The technology is already in use at bankers JP Morgan where it runs a new
$1 trillion Swaps/Derivatives application.
“The first wave of Internet applications could get by with relatively
simple stateless application servers that passed each client request on to
the database,” said John Rymer, lead analyst at Emeryville, CA-based
UpStream Consulting, in support of the product.
“However, for companies to run their business-critical applications over an
Internet or intranet, a fundamentally new kind of application server–a
‘business engine’ is required. Business engines such as the Persistence
PowerTier eliminate the barriers to distributed application performance by
accelerating client response time beyond what can be achieved with even the
most powerful relational databases,” continued Rymer.
PowerTier offers what the vendor calls “parallel application processing,”
which is the ability to perform multiple simultaneous tasks in a single
user session. It also offers a real-time notification system, called
ProActive Agents, notifying users of any changes in the business environment.
Real-time notification ensures that critical decisions can be made using
up-to-the-second, accurate information. PowerTier supports CORBA, Unified
Modeling Language (UML), Java, Visual Basic, C++, UNIX and Windows NT
design and deployment environments, and other industry standards.
The vendor says that the PowerTier 2.0 server with ProActive Agents will be
available in March, 1998. Development licenses start at $8,000 per
developer, and deployment licenses from $10,000 per server.