Informix Announces Upgrade of its Powerful Server Platform for Next-Generation Internet Solutions

Business Wire, June 6, 2000

Business Editors

JavaOne 2000

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 6, 2000

New Release of Informix Foundation.2000 Boasts Improved

Performance and Scalability; Chase Manhattan Bank Sees Major

Reduction in Server CPU Utilization with Informix MaxConnect

Informix(R) Corporation (NASDAQ: IFMX), the technology leader in software infrastructure for the i.Economy, announced today a new version of Informix Foundation.2000(TM), the company's high performance, fully extensible data and content management platform for the Internet. Informix Foundation.2000 is helping enterprises win in the i.Economy by reducing new Internet application development cycles, simplifying the migration of existing applications to the Internet, and lowering the overall cost of ownership for enterprise software applications.

The new release of Informix Foundation.2000 further extends the product's already impressive performance, scalability and throughput. Results of Informix's beta program showed that Foundation.2000 9.21 provides 12-20 percent improved performance, requires 40 percent less memory overhead, 16 percent less CPU utilization and supports 23 percent more users. Also new in this release of Foundation.2000 9.21 is support for Informix MaxConnect(TM), Informix's new connection server that further improves performance and user scalability.

According to Colin White, founder of DataBase Associates, a leading information technology consultancy, companies desperately want and need to extend the value of their data to the Internet. "We see a great need for platforms such as Informix Foundation.2000 on which customers can develop new, leading edge e-business applications as well as seamlessly integrate existing legacy and client/server data using technologies such as XML," he said. "It is companies that can best integrate their existing and new data assets that will win out in this new era of e-business computing."

"This release of Foundation.2000 further solidifies its position as a leading platform for developing enterprise applications for the Internet and the i.Economy," added Dr. Brian Staff, director of product marketing, Foundation.2000, Informix Software. "In today's demanding environments, client connections use tremendous amounts of system resources, resulting in poor response times and increased CPU utilization. Informix Foundation.2000 9.21 addresses these crucial issues head-on, providing greatly increased performance while reducing CPU utilization, all along helping extend the life span of our customers' hardware investment. Foundation.2000 is emerging as the `smart' information management solution for the Internet, cost-effectively combining leading-edge technology with the stability, reliability and performance Informix solutions are known for," Staff said.

Informix MaxConnect Further Improves Performance and Scalability

Informix MaxConnect, the company's new connection server that further improves performance and scalability, is now available for Foundation.2000. Informix MaxConnect moves the management of user connections away from the Informix database server by multiplexing client connections to a much smaller number of network connections. This increases system scalability by increasing the number of users that can be simultaneously connected to the Informix database server. It also saves on system resources required for communications processes, reducing server response times and CPU utilization.

Proof came late last year when Informix MaxConnect, together with Informix Foundation.2000, achieved world-record power and price/performance results on the Baan IVc client/server benchmark. Informix MaxConnect handled 18,650 concurrent connections in the highly connection-intensive Baan application, expanding the capacity of Informix Foundation.2000 to handle tens of thousands of concurrent users. This record benchmark underscored the position of Foundation.2000 as the leading platform to drive applications ranging from powerful transactional systems to the most demanding, mission-critical Web applications where user load and transaction rates can be extremely unpredictable.

Chase Manhattan Bank, a beta site for Informix MaxConnect, came away impressed with the product. "We experienced a 38 percent reduction in server CPU utilization, with no increase in response time at 800 users," said John Michael, vice president of database engineering at Chase Manhattan Bank. "The pooling mechanism in Informix MaxConnect was key in helping reduce our actual server connections more than anticipated," he said. "We have been very impressed with Informix MaxConnect and how it relieved some of the burdens from our Foundation.2000 operating environment."

About Informix Foundation.2000

Informix Foundation.2000 is a complete software platform for traditional transaction processing, Internet applications and managing complex data types, and includes a powerful, scalable and reliable database server. At the core of Informix Foundation.2000 is an industry-proven database engine for mission-critical and Internet-based applications. Capable of supporting thousands of concurrent users, Foundation.2000 delivers maximum reliability, availability and scalability--spanning workgroups to parallel systems. Informix Foundation.2000 also supports non-traditional data types within the database--including video, images and geospatial data--by incorporating Informix's DataBlade(R) technology inside the database server.