Informix Corp used the Java Business Expo show in New York this week to make the first public announcement following its acquisition of Cloudscape Inc in October. The Menlo Park, California-based database vendor unveiled version 3.0 of Cloudscape’s embedded, Java-based database along with a special program that enables developers to get free licenses to the database and sell them to customers – within the first year only – for a fee once they’ve written their applications. Jim Bolton, general manager of the Cloudscape division, said the database was primarily designed to be embedded inside Java applications and stored on laptop computers, handheld PCs and other mobile devices. It’s designed to be invisible in the application so that the user doesn’t even know it’s there, he said, adding that because the database is written in 100% Java the administration time and cost of ownership is very low compared to rival offerings from vendors such as Sybase Inc and Oracle Corp.
It can also be used as a standalone database for mobile workers that need to remotely access the corporate database and need somewhere to download their data to, said Bolton. Not every salesperson will be able to dial in remotely when they need to, he said. Those people will be able to dial in once, download the customer or product data they need, and then work off line for the rest of the day. As part of the acquisition, Informix also got its hands on Cloudscape’s synchronization technology, CloudSynch, which enables users to copy their data to the central database to ensure that the data’s consistent. Until now Informix has chiefly positioned the database for the above applications; mobile workers in the field. But in addition, Bolton said Informix is now intending to also position the offering as a server product, aimed at small and medium businesses – those with 100 employees or less, although the market for this is much smaller than for mobile users. We’ll market it in conjunction with Foundation 2000, Bolton said, but aim at companies that don’t have the kinds of workloads that Foundation 2000 is designed for, he said.
To try to establish the platform as one of the leading Java application development environments, Bolton said that Informix has decided to give away licenses for Cloudscape to developers. The offer will only last for the next 60 days and any developers that download the database in that time are free to sell database licenses, alongwith their Java applications, for the next year and keep the revenues for themselves. Customers, on the other hand, have no such luxury. A single user license for Cloudscape costs $199 per user while the server version costs $4,895 per CPU.
As well as making its own announcements, Informix also came out in support of Sun Microsystems Inc’s new Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standard. Jeff Menz, executive director of marketing for Informix’s i.Foundation group said the company would support J2EE on all its products across the board, including the Cloudscape offering.
