GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) represents version 6.0 of its infrastructure software suite. The new release provides a complete middleware platform for managing data, messaging and business logic for applications that require high performance and the ability to scale horizontally across hundreds of machines.

Enterprises across industries are demanding scalable applications for extreme transaction processing (XTP), real-time analytics and high-performance SOA. The need for high performance, highly scalable applications has never been greater in industries such as financial services, telecommunications, government and Web 2.0. However, this rapidly growing class of applications can no longer be supported by traditional approaches. GigaSpaces XAP provides middleware for building applications with limitless scalability and low-latency performance. It simply and easily transforms new and existing applications into scalable services with increased performance. With GigaSpaces XAP, the ability to use, develop, deploy, install and change applications has never been easier.

"The challenges of building scalable, high-performance applications are especially great when dealing with stateful applications, such as those used for transaction processing or with frequent access to data," said Nati Shalom, founder and CTO, GigaSpaces. "Traditional approaches to this problem - using multiple tiers of products such as databases, application servers and messaging middleware - just don't cut it. GigaSpaces XAP 6.0 solves these issues, and does so with a simple, standard programming model familiar to tens of thousands of software developers."

As part of the new product release, GigaSpaces has embraced a much simpler, non-intrusive programming model that allows developers to write their applications in Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs), plain .Net and plain C++ objects. For Java, GigaSpaces is achieving this by supporting the Spring Framework, which is rapidly becomingng the de-facto standard in Enterprise Java programming. GigaSpaces will continue supporting the other standard APIs in the product, including JavaSpaces, JMS, JDBC and Jcache

"Current, mainstream application platforms are increasingly showing they cannot cope with the requirements of XTP applications," said Massimo Pezzini, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. "So far, leading edge users have aggregated their high performance/high scalability application platform by combining point, best of breed technologies. But, a new generation of comprehensive standard-based XTP platforms will emerge from the convergence of grid technologies, event-driven architectures, distributed caching platforms and high-performance messaging."

The GigaSpaces platform is deployed at hundreds of customer sites. Many of GigaSpaces' direct customers include global telecommunications, government and financial firms.

"GigaSpaces made a promise to our company that its software would adhere to the Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) approach," said Alberto Santini, Head of Business Intelligence, Monte Paschi Asset Management, one of the leading banks in Italy. "The new product release has not only fulfilled that promise, but also allows us to deploy the software throughout our infrastructure at the speed of light."

The GigaSpaces software is also widely used as an embedded component in OEM deals with large and small ISVs. "We selected GigaSpaces because we needed high-performance software that was scalable and would offer advanced global connectivity and exchange support," said John Mansfield, Global Trading Program Director at Patsystems. "With GigaSpaces, we can address the growing needs of the trading marketplace and continue to offer a first-class trading platform."