Composite Software Upgrades Information ServerComposite Software Upgrades Information Server

Composite Software has released an upgrade of Information Server, adding Java-based security and support for more data sources.

Information Server 5.1 adds integration with SQL Server 2008, Hewlett-Packard Neoview and Oracle 11g. In addition, the server can access and deliver data to business applications that use REST services and other standard protocols.

New data virtualization capabilities include clustering, version control, monitoring management and advanced caching. Added security includes the Java Authentication, Authorization Service, plus user token authentication plug-ins.

Composite, a pure-play data virtualization vendor, is seeing its technology used in a variety of projects, such as data federation for individual projects, data warehouse extensions for wider reporting use cases, enterprise data sharing for multiple applications using a service-oriented approach, and internal and external cloud data integration.

Pricing for Information Server 5.1 is based on required processing power and size of deployment.

Composite last week also reported more than 2,000 downloads of its Software Data Integration Strategy Recommendation Tool, introduced 18 months ago. The tool is a free, configurable, online tool designed to help enterprises determine the most effective data integration approach. The tools assesses 13 variables, and provides the option to assign relative weighting to each variable.

In May, Composite introduced an appliance called the BI Accelerator that automates within business intelligence deployments several major tasks, such as requirements gathering, data analysis and report deployment. The appliance, developed with partnerMotio, initially supports IBM Cognos deployments. Other BI products are expected to be supported in the future.