PeerDirect Suite to Support Linux

PeerDirect Corp. last week announced it is providing native support for Linux on its flagship PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise suite. The move will enable its customers to decentralize and distribute database-driven business applications to far-flung locations using Linux-based application servers and databases, officials said.

PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise provides bidirectional synchronization, distribution and replication of corporate data and applications across multiple locations, desktops and mobile devices. It supports heterogeneous database environments, enabling companies to run Linux in remote deployment platforms, even if they are running Windows or Unix in data centers, said officials at PeerDirect, of Bedford, Mass.

Greg Burnell, chief operating officer for TeamShare Inc., a software developer specializing in Web-based collaborative software solutions, has beta tested the product. Burnell is happy about PeerDirects move, given that TeamShare was already moving toward Linux.

“[Linux] provides a low-cost solution for some people, but it still provides a very good [technical] solution,” said Burnell, in Colorado Springs, Colo. “We think Linux isnt going [away], and we want to be part of it, and we were very pleased they made the decision to move into that platform. We were already under way with using Linux-based [The Apache Software Foundations Apache and BEA Systems Inc.s WebLogic] application servers.”

PeerDirect officials said customers are also increasingly interested in running Linux on remote devices such as PDAs, small laptops and even cell phones. In the future, such deployments could reach consumer devices such as DVD players. With Linux running on such devices, the need for synchronization and replication that support them is growing, the officials said.

PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise allows automatic bidirectional data synchronization among any combination of databases, officials said, including those from Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., Progress Software Corp., IBM and Sybase Inc., as well as PostgreSQL.

PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise for Linux, available now, is priced between $500 and $1,000 per server.