Cloudscape Inc, a one year-old start-up from Oakland, California, will shortly launch its first range of products which it says are the first in a new category of database management applications. Cloudscape’s software will combine distributed object technology, Java and traditional relational database systems to create what the company is billing as the first Java-based object relational database management system. It’s designed for use on laptops, personal digital assistants, network computers and a range of thin client devices, and supports such standards as JDBC Java Database Connectivity, SQL, Corba and HTML. Intended as a portable application for mobile users, Cloudscape is designed to be embedded into other programs, such as electronic mail, financial advisory and vacation planning applications, for instance, and will be shipped as part of a Java software development kit. Malcolm Colton, vice president of marketing at Cloudscape, once at Illustra Technologies Corp, believes there is a large potential market for this type of object relational database and is targeting it at anybody who uses Java. The company hopes to make its money from selling licenses to people wishing to embed the JBMS into their applications, but will initially be offering a free evaluation kit and a low-cost deployment license. The full database has a footprint of around 1.5Mb, but can be compressed down to around 600, and because it’s written in components the software can be shrunk down further for specific applications. Cloudscape says this also means upgrades can be downloaded over the wire, helping to save on software support costs. Version 1.0 of Cloudscape’s Java Based Database Management System is currently in alpha testing and is shortly going into beta, with a final release date penciled in for December. Colton claims it’s currently running at about half the speed of a typical lightweight SQL database and says speed should be roughly comparable when the full version is released. Meanwhile, Cloudscape is working on a Windows CE version of the software which should be available in mid 1998, depending on when the Java Virtual Machine is available on CE. Cloudscape is also developing what it describes as a high performance replication hub to manage the replication of messages between server sites and remote clients, which it says should be ready around the same time. Formed in September 1996 by refugees from Illustra, Informix Corp, Oracle Corp and Sybase Inc, Cloudscape is funded by Brentwood Venture Capital, Accel Partners and a number of private investors. It currently has a staff of 20. The company received $5.1m in venture funding in April and is expecting the next round to come through in the first quarter of 1998.
