Sybase announced the availability of its Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) Cluster Edition. This edition features patent-pending Virtualized Resource Management (VRM) technology that reduces the complexity of deploying a database application across a shared disk server cluster, and helps customers meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for performance and availability, while also reducing hardware and power costs through optimal resource utilization.

 "Enterprises today are struggling to reduce their infrastructure costs yet at the same time meet high-availability requirements,” said Carl Olofson, research vice president for Information Management and Data Integration, IDC. “Shared-disk cluster architecture helps to meet these key enterprise requirements for mission-critical database applications. Sybase's focus on building in capabilities to reduce IT complexity through a shared-disk cluster architecture to improve system availability and reliability, and to simplify administration will go towards enabling further adoption of this approach."

“ASE Cluster Edition brings unparalleled availability and resource optimization to a database platform already known for its superior performance, reliability and low total cost of ownership," said Dr. Raj Nathan, chief marketing officer, Sybase. “Customers in areas such as financial services, telecommunications, retail and government have turned to ASE because it handles extreme transactions in OLTP environments ranging from small and mid-sized databases to VLDB systems with rock solid reliability. We are pleased that we've been able to develop ASE Cluster Edition so that our customers, who run some of the world's most critical data, are able to cost-effectively achieve unprecedented service levels.”

Several key customers, including some major financial services firms that worked closely with Sybase over the last year, commented on the ease of implementing the ASE Cluster Edition software. With five patents pending, Sybase ASE Cluster Edition’s built-in Virtualized Resource Management (VRM) technology provides application workloads with a virtual view of the physical cluster that can be dynamically changed on demand, greatly simplifying the installation, configuration, and maintenance of the system.

Sybase’s unique Virtualized Resource Management technology facilitates:

• A logical view of physical cluster resources that makes it possible to easily and dynamically change database resources so that SLAs are met for an application workload
• The configuration and deployment of workloads across cluster nodes
• Availability of full information about the current state of the physical cluster for assistance and fine tuning of the overall system.

Enterprises can leverage Sybase ASE Cluster Edition to:

• Maintain optimal service levels through system failures, peak loads and downtime for planned maintenance
• Maximize resource utilization by consolidating database workloads running from underutilized hardware onto a smaller number of machines
• Implement a data grid system by reducing infrastructure costs by replacing expensive, high-end hardware with a grid of low-cost servers that still delivers the same service levels.

Recognizing the benefits ASE Cluster Edition can deliver to their customers, Sybase partners are putting their support behind the product:
"ASE Cluster Edition truly takes high availability to the next level," said Doug Starkey, vice president, ATS Corporation. "This will be a big win for many of our large financial customers looking to guarantee even higher levels of service with the Appix suite of fixed income software."

“Sybase’s patent-pending VRM solution truly appears to deliver measurable improvements for clustered database environments,“ said Bradley Tashenberg, president and CEO of Bradmark Technologies, Inc. “Sybase's technology greatly reduces the challenge of implementing mission-critical applications in this environment.”

"Embarcadero is pleased to announce that its DBArtisan database administration tool will support Sybase ASE Cluster Edition,” said Gregory Davoll, vice president Worldwide Marketing, Embarcadero Technologies. “Our joint customers have beta tested the Cluster Edition software, and we are committed to continuing these efforts to allow Sybase DBAs to maximize availability, performance and security of their database applications."

"Lumigent is excited to be working with Sybase to ensure that compliance and regulatory requirements are met as customers take advantage of new technologies for distributed computing, such as shared disk clustering, to achieve higher availability and reliability,” said Roger Hodskins, vice president of Marketing and Alliances, Lumigent Technologies. “Our customers will be pleased to know that Lumigent’s Audit DB will work with ASE Cluster Edition to provide advanced policy-driven vulnerability assessment and continuous data auditing services.”

"Sun and Sybase have a long history of working together to provide leading solutions for meeting the extreme demands of the data center. ASE Cluster Edition on the Solaris platform enables our customers to fully optimize the use of their IT assets, increase the return on their data center investments, and meet the ever increasing service levels that they are being asked to achieve,” said Juan Carlos Soto, vice president, Market Development for Sun Microsystems. “We are pleased that Solaris is one of the initial platforms chosen for this important product release."

“Historically, deploying clustered systems on physical hardware has been complex and costly to test, develop, deploy and manage,” said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances at VMware. “Now, with Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise Cluster Edition, supported running on VMware virtualization software – the world’s most reliable virtualization platform – customers can virtualize their mission-critical workloads, simplify their management, and achieve levels of availability and continuity not possible on physical systems.”