New Products

Although not a product per se, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF's) newly minted GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 (GNU AGPLv3) will affect many forthcoming works of software artisanship. Based on version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3), the new Affero “fork” includes additional terms that allow users who interact with the licensed software over a network to receive the source for that program. With Affero, FSF seeks to foster user and development communities around network-oriented free software. FSF claims that the GNU AGPL will enable the same kind of massive collaboration among developers around Web services and other networked software that the GNU GPL has fostered over the years with non-networked applications.

www.fsf.org

Further boosting Norway's place in global open-source development, eZ Systems recently released version 4.0 of eZ Publish, the company's enterprise content management system. eZ Publish is an application for creating Web sites, on-line stores, intranets and extranets. New features in 4.0 include full PHP 5 compatibility, full support for using eZ Components in plugins, improved internal XML handling and an updated Web site interface. The product is available as either an out-of-the-box or a tailor-made solution, depending on the varying needs of clients. GPL'd Linux and Windows versions are available for download at eZ Systems' Web site.

www.ez.no

Perforce wrapped up 2007 announcing a new version of its Fast Software Configuration Management (SCM) System, Perforce 2007.3. SCM is an application version lifecycle management (ALM) tool that versions and manages source code and digital assets for enterprises of all sizes. The most significant component of this release is the new SDK for the Defect Tracking Gateway, which allows customers and vendors to develop improved integrations to commercial and in-house tracking systems. Perforce also claims an advantage from its ability to integrate with other tools rather than being a one-stop shop, allowing customers to add the project management and process automation tools of their choice. A 45-day full version of Perforce with support and a free, two-user version are available from the firm's Web site.

www.perforce.com

Fidelity National Information Services announced new performance benchmarks on FIS Profile, its real-time technology solution for the commercial and retail banking industry, now that it runs on Linux. By running FIS Profile on Red Hat Linux Enterprise 5 and the HP ProLiant DL580 G5 server platform with four Intel Quad-Core Xeon Series 7300 processors, the solution can manage a bank with 25 million accounts, running core banking processes in real time on a single server. Fidelity claims that the solution offers a tenfold improvement in cost performance per account while maintaining the reliability and security required by the commercial-banking industry. This solution is intended to replace the mainframe-based systems for mid-tier banks that were developed in the 1980s. Both Red Hat and Intel were involved in developing the integrated platform.

www.fidelityinfoservices.com

New in the SAS space is AMCC's 3ware 9690SA Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) RAID Controller whose sales proposition includes the flexibility offered by its three PCI Express low-profile controller choices: eight internal ports, eight external ports or four internal/four external ports. The 3ware 9690SA provides 2–24 ports of SATA connectivity and maximized SAS expandability for up to 128 devices per controller. The SAS controllers include AMCC's unified RAID management interface and software suite, enabling a simplified configuration experience irrespective of its storage interface. The product is destined for data-center environments needing expanded connectivity and high levels of read and write performance. Targeted applications include databases, NAS storage, Web servers, cluster servers, supercomputing, near-line backup and archival, security systems and pro audio and video editing appliances.

www.amcc.com