Oracle Corp. today announced that Oracle(R) Application Server 10g, the first middleware software that simplifies the management of applications running in a grid computing environment, is now available. The new release offers nearly 600 new features, including advancements in integration and the Web services infrastructure. Customers and partners who have been using the beta version of the product have seen significant cost savings, improved performance and manageability. "Our clients need a highly available and scalable middle tier, and the enhanced caching and load balancing capabilities in Oracle Application Server 10g enable us to deliver that," said Mike McDermott, COO at CISCO, Inc., an Oracle partner and beta tester of Oracle Application Server 10g. "This new release delivers the best performance yet." Based on open-standards, the Oracle Application Server 10g product line offers a comprehensive platform for supporting the diverse requirements of an e-business, including full support for Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), enterprise portal software, high-speed caching, business intelligence, identity management, rapid application development, wireless capabilities and Web services. In addition, Oracle Application Server 10g is the industry's only middleware product line to feature built-in grid computing and integration technologies. With the addition of grid computing capabilities, Oracle Application Server 10g can help customers reduce the time, labor and cost of IT management by pooling industry-standard servers, storage and software as needed. As a result, companies can use the power of their entire system, or grid, for all enterprise applications rather than purchasing more capacity for separate applications. As part of Oracle's grid infrastructure software, Oracle Application Server 10g allows organizations to run existing applications on enterprise grids without making any modifications. Customers Integrate Their Business Systems The enhanced integration components in Oracle Application Server 10g enable companies to use a single platform to address application-to-application, business-to-business, business process and Web services integration. For beta customer ENST Bretagne, a university in France, there is an increasing need to hide application boundaries and develop seamless business processes. Using Oracle Application Server Portal, the university has been able to make custom front-office applications available to students and faculty for several years. However, in order to more effectively manage and process student information, the university has seen an increasing need to integrate data and process event-driven information with its SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. "ENST Bretagne is using the beta version of Oracle Application Sever 10g to streamline its student registration process, which includes everything from general class registration, to Visa checks for foreign students and email and user account assignments," said Christophe Guychard, IT infrastructure manager for the university. "After testing the business process modeling capabilities in Oracle Application Server 10g, we have found that Oracle provides a truly powerful integration solution." Marvell Semiconductor has been using the beta version of Oracle Application Server 10g to manage transactions with partners around the world. "Our previous system did not support all the aspects of integration we needed to conduct business with our partners. We were facing the task of obtaining the missing components from third parties and incorporating them ourselves -- a costly and time-consuming process," said Kiran Atlluri, corporate B2B coordinator at Marvell. "The end-to-end capabilities offered by Oracle's Application Server 10g, including full support for the RosettaNet standard, have helped us maximize our IT investment." Streamlining Web Services Oracle Application Server 10g provides a straightforward approach to developing and managing Web services and composite applications -- applications that combine functionality from new and legacy applications. Full support for the latest WS-I Web services standards and interoperability with .Net Web services enable organizations to deploy and manage secure, enterprise-class Web services. As a result, companies can quickly deliver new services to customers, employees and trading partners. "With Oracle Application Server 10g, we found that moving applications to the Web didn't have to mean we had to hire more staff -- we could leverage the resources we had," said Oracle Application Server10g beta customer Jeremy Forman, computer systems analyst, New Mexico Department of Transportation. "In addition, the new automation features in the application server are streamlining the way we administer our applications, allowing us to quickly and easily manage more and larger applications and Web sites." New Standards for Reliability With this new release, Oracle sets new standards for reliability with more than 11,000 beta testing hours and 87,000 hours of live deployment. In addition, Oracle Application Server 10g and related technologies incorporate more than 100 patented and patent-pending features. As a leader in the middleware industry, Oracle has also led or participated in the creation of more than 100 Web services and Java standards through the Java Community Process (JCP). Pricing and Availability Oracle Application Server 10g is immediately available for purchase or free download under a development license from Oracle Technology Network ( http:/otn.oracle.com ). Oracle Application Server 10g offers three editions: -- Java Edition: $5,000 per processor, or on a per user basis for $100 per Named User Plus -- Standard Edition: $10,000 per processor or $200 per Named User Plus -- Enterprise Edition: $20,000 per processor or $400 per Named User Plus