ACADEMIA
Sun, Zeus Partner To Offer Next Generation Application Traffic Management
Sun and Zeus announce a partnership to deliver fully integrated Application Delivery Controller solutions: Zeus Technology and Sun Microsystems announced a partnership to deliver Zeus’ best-of-breed Application Delivery Controller deployed on Sun’s latest CoolThreads and x64 systems hardware running the Solaris 10 operating system. Sun’s global distribution network will carry the new end-to-end application traffic management system, a powerful new combination of Sun hardware and ZXTM (Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager). 
The new offering represents an entirely new level of scalability and performance for traffic management systems, with the combined Sun hardware and ZXTM software solution able to outperform most dedicated hardware appliances, while at the same time offering an unparalleled ability to manage application traffic – even XML - using traffic scripting. Large enterprises, service providers, and online media companies will use the solution to deliver high-performance, reliable applications that meet service level agreements while minimizing operational costs.
Zeus Technology’s ZXTM application traffic management software directs incoming requests to the fastest server available and directs traffic away from slower or inactive servers, while dramatically increasing the number of users a server can support. Using software to load balance traffic across multiple servers makes it easy for enterprises to scale their applications. Thanks to ZXTM’s built-in redundancy features, users can access applications even in the event of a failure. Applications that are not designed for clustering can be scaled with session persistence, improving availability and response times, and application servers can be isolated from external networks, protecting the systems from external security threats, even including denial of service attacks and application-level hacking.
“This partnership is an excellent opportunity to bring the benefits of ZXTM to a broader market. Sun leads the industry in both price and performance, and running our award winning software on these platforms provides a robust, flexible application traffic management solution that can evolve to meet growing business needs”, said Paul Brennan, Chairman, Zeus Technology.
The combination of ZXTM running on Sun platforms provides a best-of-breed application delivery controller, enabling service providers to offer reliable, high-performance network and Web services. Optimized for speed on Sun systems, the ZXTM software enables businesses to select from a wide variety of Sun systems running the Solaris 10 operating system. Sun's scalable server platforms, including Sun Fire servers with CoolThreads technology, can dramatically increase throughput and provide eco-friendly energy savings by reducing energy consumption and datacenter footprints without sacrificing high performance.
“Sun and Zeus bring to market an unparalleled offering for organizations that need to manage high volumes of traffic and mission-critical Web services. Customers can select from a wide variety of Sun systems running the Solaris 10 operating System to benefit from this best-of-breed Application Delivery Controller” said Antony Watkins, Communications and Media Practice, Sun Microsystems
Sun servers continue to set new standards for performance, reliability, and energy efficiency and lead the industry in terms of price and performance. As a result, running the ZXTM software on Sun platforms provides the foundation of a robust, flexible application traffic management solution that can grow and adapt to evolving business requirements.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs)
According to Gartner, “ADCs reside in the data center, typically in front of frontline Web servers. They are deployed asymmetrically — only at the data center end — and are designed to improve the availability, performance and security of Web- or Internet Protocol (IP)-based applications. ADCs enhance the performance of Web-based and related applications for end users by providing a suite of services at the network and application layers.”
Gartner, Inc., “Market Share: Application Acceleration Equipment, Worldwide, 1Q07” by Joe Skorupa and Nhat Pham, June 8, 2007.
The new offering represents an entirely new level of scalability and performance for traffic management systems, with the combined Sun hardware and ZXTM software solution able to outperform most dedicated hardware appliances, while at the same time offering an unparalleled ability to manage application traffic – even XML - using traffic scripting. Large enterprises, service providers, and online media companies will use the solution to deliver high-performance, reliable applications that meet service level agreements while minimizing operational costs.
Zeus Technology’s ZXTM application traffic management software directs incoming requests to the fastest server available and directs traffic away from slower or inactive servers, while dramatically increasing the number of users a server can support. Using software to load balance traffic across multiple servers makes it easy for enterprises to scale their applications. Thanks to ZXTM’s built-in redundancy features, users can access applications even in the event of a failure. Applications that are not designed for clustering can be scaled with session persistence, improving availability and response times, and application servers can be isolated from external networks, protecting the systems from external security threats, even including denial of service attacks and application-level hacking.
“This partnership is an excellent opportunity to bring the benefits of ZXTM to a broader market. Sun leads the industry in both price and performance, and running our award winning software on these platforms provides a robust, flexible application traffic management solution that can evolve to meet growing business needs”, said Paul Brennan, Chairman, Zeus Technology.
The combination of ZXTM running on Sun platforms provides a best-of-breed application delivery controller, enabling service providers to offer reliable, high-performance network and Web services. Optimized for speed on Sun systems, the ZXTM software enables businesses to select from a wide variety of Sun systems running the Solaris 10 operating system. Sun's scalable server platforms, including Sun Fire servers with CoolThreads technology, can dramatically increase throughput and provide eco-friendly energy savings by reducing energy consumption and datacenter footprints without sacrificing high performance.
“Sun and Zeus bring to market an unparalleled offering for organizations that need to manage high volumes of traffic and mission-critical Web services. Customers can select from a wide variety of Sun systems running the Solaris 10 operating System to benefit from this best-of-breed Application Delivery Controller” said Antony Watkins, Communications and Media Practice, Sun Microsystems
Sun servers continue to set new standards for performance, reliability, and energy efficiency and lead the industry in terms of price and performance. As a result, running the ZXTM software on Sun platforms provides the foundation of a robust, flexible application traffic management solution that can grow and adapt to evolving business requirements.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs)
According to Gartner, “ADCs reside in the data center, typically in front of frontline Web servers. They are deployed asymmetrically — only at the data center end — and are designed to improve the availability, performance and security of Web- or Internet Protocol (IP)-based applications. ADCs enhance the performance of Web-based and related applications for end users by providing a suite of services at the network and application layers.”
Gartner, Inc., “Market Share: Application Acceleration Equipment, Worldwide, 1Q07” by Joe Skorupa and Nhat Pham, June 8, 2007. 