07/28/2006

WSO2, a new start-up creating open source platforms for Web services, launched its premier product, Tungsten, and announced that the company has received an investment from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel Corporation.

ebizQ received the following details:

Founded by technology pioneers, the WSO2 team is comprised of individuals instrumental in establishing Web services and SOAP standards, and longtime contributors to the Apache open source project.

“The middleware market today is dominated by expensive, complex products that will be rapidly commoditized by less expensive, technically superior open source alternatives that have been created specifically for today’s Web services environments,” said Sanjiva Weerawarana, CEO of WSO2. “WSO2 has developed an open, modern architecture that delivers the cleanest standards support.”

WSO2 is the first company to deliver middleware built from the ground up to support Web services, an approach that makes it dramatically faster and easier to develop, deploy and manage applications. WSO2 Tungsten, an application server, is the only product to fully support Web services in a simple, clean, lightweight model that cuts out the unnecessary layers that complicate competing products.

The management team is:

• Sanjiva Weerawarana – Founder, Chairman and CEO – Sanjiva spent eight years in IBM Research where he was a key driver of IBM’s Web services strategy. He has co-authored many Web services specifications and is currently a member of the W3C Web Service Description Working Group. Sanjiva founded the Lanka Software Foundation, a non-profit group that promotes open source development in Sri Lanka, and also held teaching positions at universities in the United States and Sri Lanka.



• Paul Fremantle – Co-founder and Vice President of Technology – Paul spent nine years at IBM where he was a Senior Technical Staff Member. He created the Web Services Gateway and led the team that shipped it as part of WebSphere. He co-created the Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF) with Sanjiva and is currently co-chair of OASIS Web Services Reliable eXchange Technical Committee.



• Davanum Srinivas – Co-founder and Vice President of Engineering – Davanum spent the past seven years at Computer Associates where he was in the office of the CTO. Davanum has contributed to many core Web services specifications, and has been involved with the Apache Web Services project since its inception. He is a prolific contributor to Apache Axis and is an elected member of the Apache Software Foundation.



• Jivaka Weeratunge – Vice President of Finance – Jivaka has 25 years of experience in finance and has run his own companies, in addition to serving as CEO of Capital Suisse Asia. He has served as director for several institutions, including the Colombo Stock Exchange and Forbes Financial Services, among others.

WSO2 Tungsten

WSO2 Tungsten is fully open source and built on Apache Axis2, the popular Web services foundation that WSO2 developers helped to create. It integrates Apache Axiom, Apache Neethi, Apache Rampart and Apache Sandesha to form a production quality, comprehensive Web services application server platform. It can be used to expose new or existing applications as Web services, build reliable messaging links across the enterprise, or serve as a host for AJAX-based Web applications. WSO2 Tungsten integrates with NET, J2EE, CICS, SAP and other Web service enabled platforms.

WSO2 Tungsten includes an embedded Web server and can be used as a standalone platform. It can also be added to an Apache Tomcat or JBoss Application Server and improve and extend either products’ XML support. Key features are:

• Full support for key Web services and REST in a single application server



• Complete interoperability with Microsoft .NET, Windows Communications Framework (Indigo) and IBM WebSphere.



• Includes XML-centric client API with full WSDL and policy support



• Supports synchronous as well as asynchronous Web service utilization



• Supports archive-based modules and a services deployment model with hot deployment support



• Provides flexible service life cycle model for managing different level of sessions



• Includes multiple code generation options for greater flexibility * Includes RSS/ATOM support for easy server monitoring through a browser or feed aggregator



• Supports lightweight AJAX administration for simple configuration of reliability, security and advanced features



• Available as a standalone lightweight server, or can be embedded inside Apache Tomcat and JBoss Application Server

WSO2 Tungsten 1.0 is a free and open source application server released under the Apache License. WSO2 sells a wide variety of related support, consulting and training services. Annual support packages are available at Silver, Gold and Platinum levels with prices starting at $3,000 for up to two servers.