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Terracotta, a provider of “infrastructure software for enterprise Java scalability,” on May 25 announced the availability of Ehcache 2.1, a new version of its distributed caching offering.
Ehcache 2.1 is a “significant upgrade to the most widely used distributed caching solution on the market,” Terracotta said. New in Ehcache 2.1 is a plug-in Enterprise Monitor for Ehcache, which “provides real‑time visibility into key performance metrics for the cache, enabling developers to optimize the performance of their applications. The plug-in is backwards-compatible with previous editions of Ehcache and requires no code changes.”
Other new features in Version 2.1 include “expanded support for IBM WebSphere [that] ensures that WebSphere users can take advantage of all the features of Ehcache. In addition, Terracotta Web Sessions, a fully coherent, highly available and durable Web session clustering solution, is now available for IBM WebSphere, adding to its support for WebLogic, Tomcat, JBoss and Jetty,” Terracotta said.
Ehcache 2.1 also includes improved support for the JTA (Java Transaction API), and “enhanced transactional support for Hibernate.” In addition, Terracotta said, the new version features “configurable SLA [service-level agreement] parameters to ensure high performance and five-nines availability for mission-critical applications. When typical operational problems occur, including disk failures, code deadlocks, network and database slowdowns, and outages, Ehcache ensures that the application can respond to meet predetermined and stringent SLAs.”
“Ehcache has become the most widely used cache for its ability to boost performance, offload the database and simplify scalability in a broad range of applications,” Amit Pandey, CEO of Terracotta, said in a statement. “We intend to keep our foot on the gas to increase its value to our customers who view it as a critical component for scaling existing applications as well as the emerging class of cloud-based applications.”
“Since Terracotta acquired Ehcache in August 2009, its adoption rate has dramatically accelerated, driven by the company’s investment in research and development,” Terracotta said. “As a result, a growing number of customers are using Ehcache for all their caching needs-scaling applications seamlessly from a single computer to large virtualized data center environments and private clouds.”
Moreover, the company said, “In the last 10 months, Terracotta has released four significant upgrades to Ehcache, all in response to customer demands. In that same period, 50,000 users have moved to the latest version of Ehcache, and more than 100 organizations have upgraded to enterprise editions, including Adobe [Systems], News Digital Media, a division of News Corporation, and Raytheon.”
Terracotta, with its Ehcache and Quartz products, is a leading provider of what it describes as “infrastructure software that delivers affordable and scalable high availability for Java applications.” Indeed, sources said, before the SpringSource division of VMware made its decision to acquire GemStone, SpringSource looked at Terracotta. But, sources said, Terracotta passed on a potential buyout, either because the company wanted to remain independent or the prospective price was not right.
Terracotta officials said, “Ehcache and Hibernate users find that the combined value of established open-source technology and simple configuration changes enables them to scale their applications to hundreds of nodes. It represents a nondisruptive, easier to use and more broadly applicable alternative to proprietary distributed caching technologies such as Oracle Coherence.”
The company also said, “The importance of distributed caching is outlined in a report that ranks Terracotta as a leader: ‘The Forrester Wave: Elastic Caching Platforms, Q2 2010,’ [by] Forrester Research, Inc., May 2010.”
And, finally, “Ehcache 2.1 is available immediately for download at www.terracotta.org.“