Startup Azul Systems, which sells Java application acceleration hardware, has opened a UK office as a precursor to European expansion. Azul sells network-attached processing appliances designed to take the load of running Java applications away from general-purpose servers. Azul says its systems, based on a custom-designed 64-bit, 24-core chip called Vega, can reduce the number of application servers companies need by a factor of three to five.
The company says it is seeing strong interest from big organisations that have started to invest heavily in deploying J2EE applications, only to find that they've run into major problems with server proliferation in the data centre. These include telecommunications companies, financial services firms and some public sector organisations, Azul said.
"With the maturing of J2EE in the marketplace as a whole over the last year, many organisations have deployed with urgency the applications they've been developing over the last couple of years," said Azul UK managing director Syed Rizvi.
In Europe the higher cost of power and IT staff, relative to Azul's native US market, adds to the appeal of server consolidation and simplifying systems, Rizvi said. "The need is even greater here," he said. The company has already opened a hub in Slough and is planning to establish regional offices in European capitals next year. This is backed up by an extension to Azul's deal with IBM Global Services to provide support services, as well as planned regional partnerships.
The concept behind Azul's network-attached processing is that a specialised processor, specifically designed for virtual machine work, is a far better way of handling virtualised code than a general-purpose x86 server. The chips are highly multithreaded and are optimised for virtual-machine tasks such as garbage collection. Scalability isn't a problem, the company says — just plug in another box when needed.
Azul argues this will only become more important as Java and .NET applications become more common, citing research from Gartner estimating that by 2008 more than 80 percent of all new e-business applications will be based on virtualised platforms.
So far the idea has started to gather some backing: in June, the company announced marketing and certification deals with BEA and JBoss. Under Azul's system, the applications continue to reside where they always have — on the general purpose servers — handing off the processing work to the Azul system. The handoff requires minor configuration work on the application server from the likes of BEA or JBoss. Azul is hoping to close a deal with Microsoft that will allow its hardware to run .NET's CLR.
