Continuent Ships Database Virtualization Solution for PostgreSQL; Open Source-Based Solution Provides Enterprises with High Availability for Mission-Critical Applications.

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Continuent, Inc., the leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced the availability of Continuent(TM) p/cluster. Continuent p/cluster provides high availability and scalability services and delivers the robustness enterprises can rely on to build mission-critical applications using PostgreSQL.

"Continuent helps companies keep their businesses, and the mission-critical applications that drive them, up and running continuously. With the availability of Continuent p/cluster for PostgreSQL, we are extending our product line to include support for all major open source databases and providing enterprises with maximum scalability and reliability at a cost efficient price," said Eero Teerikorpi, CEO of Continuent. "The forthcoming support for the commercial databases will be a natural extension of our solution portfolio, allowing customers to extend and enhance their existing investments."

Joshua O'Brien, database administrator at ZedX, Inc., a Continuent customer, said, "As an information technology company that specializes in the development of weather-dependent, decision-support products for specific industries such as agriculture and energy, data availability is business-critical for us. Continuent p/cluster provides the availability, scalability and fail-over protection that we require."

"In the PostgreSQL community, there's a burgeoning demand to push both performance and reliability to higher and higher levels, using commodity hardware and reasonably priced and/or open source software tools," said Josh Berkus, a member of PostgreSQL's Core Team. "Clustering tools like Continuent p/cluster and Sequoia help raise the high availability expectations of PostgreSQL users."

"PostgreSQL is a key component of our WatchTower(TM) enterprise system monitoring and management solution," said Jamie Lerner, president and chief executive office of CITTIO, Inc. "It is imperative that we can ensure the highest levels of availability within WatchTower and we are impressed with the database clustering features that Continuent p/cluster offers."

Features and benefits of Continuent p/cluster include:

--High availability and instantaneous failover: Continuent p/cluster provides high availability by ensuring any number of PostgreSQL database servers are fully synchronized at all times. It provides transparent failover and disaster recovering services for all transactions, and automatic continuity at the transaction level with no lost transactions. Business continuity is assured through online maintenance, with no downtime, service interruptions or database outages.

--Scalability and dynamic load balancing: A number of configurations can be installed that provide the best practices to achieve the desired application performance. This includes vertical scale-out - adding low cost commodity hardware while maintaining the image of a single large database to the application tiers. Data partitioning is also supported for additional scalability. Flexible load balancing capabilities insure the effective use of hardware investments. A number of load balancing configurations are possible, ensuring the optimal one to make the most of computer resources.

--Heterogeneous database support: Some applications may involve more than one brand of database, involve a migration from one database brand to another or simply involve upgrading to a new release of the same database. Continuent p/cluster supports it all transparently and seamlessly.

--Manageability: A single graphical management console provides a global view of the virtual databases and the database cluster. Alerts and administrative tools are generated to notify users of system status.

--Low TCO, high ROI: Installing p/cluster is simple, fast and cost effective. The architecture is designed to use commodity hardware and does not require any special hardware devices like storage area networks or load balancers, driving costs down.

--Support of PostgreSQL's native SQL: Continuent p/cluster supports PostgreSQL's native SQL and is integrated with native database functions for seamless integration and easy management. The product creates a single virtual database view of multiple PostgreSQL databases and is designed to integrate seamlessly with PostgreSQL-based applications.

"With our vast expertise in the Open Source and Linux domain, our global services focus and PowerGres distribution, based on PostgreSQL, we are one of the leading pioneers of the Open Source movement," said Dr. Rao Papolu, president of SRA OSS Inc. "The launch of Continuent p/cluster provides valuable new capabilities that enable PostgreSQL to support the most demanding of enterprise application availability requirements."

"Since 1997, The PostgreSQL Company, Command Prompt Inc. has been the only dedicated PostgreSQL provider in North America," said Joshua Drake, CEO of Command Prompt. "We are excited by the arrival of Continuent p/cluster, the first reliable and most effective high availability clustering solution for PostgreSQL."

"EnterpriseDB's high performance and Oracle compatibility already make it a compelling alternative for enterprises considering a PostgreSQL deployment," said Andy Astor, chief executive officer of EnterpriseDB. "p/cluster's support of EnterpriseDB enhances our offering by ensuring high availability for the most demanding database installations."

Continuent p/cluster is part of Continuent's open source-based product line that works with all major databases and delivers high availability in any database environment, including those that are heterogeneous. Continuent ensures availability through its database virtualization technology that creates a single view of multiple databases, whether commercial or open source, so that fail-over and load balancing capabilities are completely transparent to the application layer.

Continuent p/cluster is based on Sequoia technology, one of four projects hosted by Continuent.org, an open source community portal sponsored by Continuent, Inc. and dedicated to database high availability, scalability services and related technologies. More information about Sequoia and the other Continuent.org projects can be found at http://www.continuent.org/Projects.

Availability and pricing:

Continuent p/cluster is available today with pricing starting at $4,995 per database CPU.

About Continuent

Continuent ensures business continuity for the enterprise. With flexible solutions that deliver data availability and scalability, Continuent guarantees customers' peace of mind and lets them focus on running a successful business. Continuent's industry breakthrough middleware works with all major databases, including MySQL(R), PostgreSQL, Sybase(R), Microsoft(R) SQL Server, Oracle(R) and IBM(R) DB2(R). Through the use of database virtualization technology, Continuent solutions even support heterogeneous database environments. Continuent products are compatible with a wide variety of hardware, operating system and application environments. Continuent is headquartered in Emeryville, CA, with research labs in France and Finland. For more information, please visit www.continuent.com.

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