Monday, 12 June 2006

Srilankan Startup WSO2 Secures Intel Funding

The open source web services startup WSO2 has launched its first product Tungsten and taken a USD 4 million investment from Intel's venture capital arm. WS02 wants to compete with existing middleware players such as JBoss, in the open-source arena and IBM and BEA in the proprietary space.

Tungsten, is an application server based on Apache Axis2 web services and integrating other Apache software projects, and costs from USD 3,000 for a maximum of two servers. Tungsten can be used on its own as an alternative, or as an overlay to JBoss, IBM's WebSphere or BEA's AquaLogic, said Sanjiva Weerawarana, WS02 founder, chairman and chief executive officer.

The initial version can be added to an Apache Tomcat or a JBoss Application Server to improve or extend their support for XML. In the future, WS02 plans overlays for AquaLogic and WebSphere. The first release of Tungsten is a Java version, with a C release due out in August.

"WS02 wants to offer middleware that in its heart and gut is designed to support an entire SOA," Weerawarana said. WS02 intends to set up hosting of its software within a week so that developers can try out Tungsten and future software and tools on its Oxygen Tank developer portal. Future products will be called after other metals beginning with T, Weerawarana said, hence Titanium and Tellurium. The company's Titanium integration server/enterprise service bus should be available in the third quarter of this year, then the Tellurium server-side mashup platform is due out in the second quarter of 2007.