SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems has announced several updates to its GlassFish Portfolio Web application platform and also delivered a preview of its Java Platform Enterprise Edition 6 (Java EE 6) specification at the JavaOne conference here on June 2.

The GlassFish Portfolio is comprised of a set of open-source technologies, including OpenESB, OpenMQ, Liferay Portal, Sun GlassFish Web Stack and the GlassFish application server. Additionally, Sun announced early access of GlassFish v3 containing a full preview of the forthcoming Java EE 6. Developers can download and start using Java EE 6 at: http://www.sun.com/software/products/glassfishv3_prelude/.

“Sun offers virtually the most comprehensive software infrastructure solutions for creating and deploying secure and scalable Web and enterprise applications," said Karen Tegan Padir, vice president, MySQL and Software Infrastructure at Sun, in a statement. "With GlassFish Portfolio, Sun brings additional simplicity and lower TCO to customers by delivering the highest-scaling and best price-performance application platform. Plus, the early access of GlassFish v3 offers developers a head-start on working with all of the new features of the upcoming Java EE 6 specification, including capabilities for profiles, pruning, extensibility and ease of development,”

New enhancements to the GlassFish Portfolio include the Sun GlassFish Web Stack, which is a pre-integrated and pre-tested Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP (LAMP) stack that has been updated with new versions of leading open source projects, such as Apache HTTP, Lighttpd, PHP, Ruby, Python, Squid, Tomcat and MySQL, the company said. In addition, GlassFish Web Stack provides a new, comprehensive user interface-based management tool to simplify single- and multiple-instance deployments, Sun said

In addition, the Sun GlassFish Web Space Server has been enhanced to support the Secure Web Access (SSL-VPN) module and includes integrations with Sun Identity Manager and Microsoft SharePoint, as well as Documentum and Alfresco content management systems.

The GlassFish Portfolio is available via a flexible subscription-based pricing model starting at $999 per server, Sun said.

The GlassFish Portfolio now provides a full preview of the Java EE 6 specification (JSR 316) in the early access of GlassFish v3. Using OSGi-based modularity and the new Profile distributions, Java EE can be tailored to meet specific deployment scenarios, including the full comprehensive application server stack with transactions, messaging and other enterprise-grade features, as well as lightweight containers.

Sun also is working to improve the GlassFish Portfolio partner ecosystem, which has seen more than 120 percent enrollment growth since the program launched last year, Sun officials said.

“We chose to support Sun’s GlassFish Enterprise Server because we recognize it as a solid solution for enterprise Java deployments that fits nicely with our decision to support other Sun technologies, such as JavaFX software for Rich Internet Application development and deployment," said Mark Piller, founder and CEO of Midnight Coders. "Midnight Coders’ products will actually expand the reach of applications deployed into Sun’s GlassFish Enterprise Server for different client applications, including JavaFX, Flex, Flash, AJAX and Silverlight."