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SCO Brings OpenServer Preview To App Developers, Customers

The SCO Group Inc, the owner of the UNIX operating system and a provider of UNIX-based solutions, announced the availability of the developer preview of Legend, the code-name for the next major release of SCO OpenServer. Legend will significantly increase the number of applications available to SCO OpenServer customers and build upon the strengths that the UNIX on Intel and AMD platform is best known for: bringing increased performance, scalability, reliability, and security to the small-to-medium business and branch office environment.

Legend will provide customers with support for thousands of new applications and development tools through the latest Java platform. New Java server technology and performance improvements will speed the development and deployment of Java solutions. Legend will include PostgreSQL and MySQL relational databases for tailored application development to meet unique customer needs. In addition, Legend will include a new developer environment to create a single application for use in the SCO OpenServer and UnixWare environments.

Other Legend directions include significantly increased performance and scalability for symmetric multi-processing (SMP) and load balancing capabilities. "The Legend Developer Preview already demonstrates performance increases in several areas including a 100 percent improvement in file system speed," said Sandy Gupta, vice president of engineering at The SCO Group.

"SCO OpenServer has long had a reputation for reliability, and Legend will build upon this reputation," said Jeff Hunsaker, senior vice president and general manager of the SCO UNIX Division. "With an average of more than 20,000 hours of uptime before requiring a software reboot, customers will run their business-critical applications on the Legend release of SCO OpenServer with complete confidence."

One of the most important areas for many customers is security, and SCO OpenServer will deliver increased capabilities to ensure the most secure network environments for SCO customers. For example, Legend will include virtual private networking (VPN) to help businesses support their growing population of telecommuters and mobile workers. In addition, Legend will include encrypted file system and archive capabilities to meet the business needs of data integrity and privacy.

Web Services capabilities will also be an important component of Legend, and SCO will include the SCOx Web Services Substrate to help customers bring many of their applications that they previously used on SCO OpenServer into a Web Services environment. SCOx includes components such as SOAP and XML-based Web Services libraries and tools for developing new applications. The end result allows customers to share their data from existing or legacy applications in a Web environment without the need for reprogramming or porting of their applications, saving valuable time and money.

"As an information technology healthcare solution provider that serves remote customer locations around the world, we demand that the operating system provides our customers with maximum uptime while requiring minimal supervision," said Don McKeny, founder and president of Mardon Healthcare Information Systems. "SCO OpenServer is the platform we've chosen for deployment of our integrated healthcare solutions and we look forward to the Legend release of SCO OpenServer to make the management, performance and reliability of our solution even better."