Allaire Finds a New Home

Web software vendor Macromedia is planning to kick off a partner road show in May to debut the latest version of ColdFusion and a new lineup of Macromedia products.

Macromedia ColdFusion Server 5.0, which was released officially today, is the latest version of the Web application server by Allaire Corp., which was acquired by Macromedia last month. It is the first Allaire product released under the Macromedia brand.

The new server has a richer set of features that includes user-defined functions, application analysis and reporting tools, core engine tuning, and more capabilities for charting and graphing.

Allaire, which saw its stock drop dramatically last year, says it found a perfect fit with Macromedia. "They were interested in us for two reasons: We had some great technology for application development, and we have a strong channel that took our technology and turned it into solutions," says Phil Costa, senior product marketing manager for ColdFusion.

The Allaire acquisition, says Costa, gives Macromedia a well-cultivated solutions provider channel compared with Macromedias current channel of online stores and catalogs.

Costa says Macromedia will benefit from Allaires large channel, because a growing number of solutions providers are using Macromedia Flash to build powerful applications.