Sun Microsystems Enterprise Servers Deliver Industry-Leading Performance On PTC Windchill Factor! E-Series
Collaborative Product Commerce Application Runs Better on Sun Servers
PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) today revealed impressive performance results for Parametric Technology Corporation's (PTC) Windchill Factor! e-Series running on a Sun(TM) server. In the first-ever large-scale test of an Internet-based collaborative product commerce (CPC) solution that uses Java(TM) technology exclusively on the server side, the out-of-the-box application scaled to support 1,000 concurrent users, with power to spare, on a mid-range Sun Enterprise(TM) E4500 server running the Solaris(TM) Operating Environment. This test confirms the scalability of Java technology as an enterprise computing architecture and proves the readiness of the Windchill Factor! e-Series application, which has been adopted by a number of major world-wide manufacturing enterprises, to support the requirements of large numbers of users.
"These results conclusively demonstrate that Windchill's Internet architecture is highly scalable in real world customer environments," said Jim Heppelmann, Senior Vice President and CTO, PTC. "Given Sun's dual position as a leading platform for Windchill and a driving force behind many Internet technologies, Sun was the natural choice to start doing this kind of testing. As a result of these tests, Sun can help customers determine the optimum hardware configuration required to support their user base."
"These tests validate our internal preliminary findings about the performance of Windchill on Sun servers and the Java platform," said Kevin Hamm, President and Co-CEO, NetIDEAS Inc. "The excellent scalability found in the performance tests tells us we should be able to run 7 to 10 thousand named Windchill users on a 14 CPU E4500. That's why we've chosen to go with Sun to build our infrastructure." NetIDEAS, a start-up company and Lockheed Martin spin-out, is an application service provider that will offer Windchill to its customers by the end of the first quarter 2000.
"Scalability will be key to successful deployment of an enterprise CPC application such as Windchill," said Jack Maynard, Research Director at Aberdeen Group. "Real world application tests such as these that address the entire solution are essential to accurately predicting total system scalability. Application tests are not a database exercise, they must stress the application. Oracle long ago proved to the market that their database can scale -- now it's time for applications to go through the same proof points. An accurate representation of application performance and scalability must exercise the entire solution, as Sun and PTC have done with these tests."
"This was a real world test of application performance in an Internet environment, and demonstrates the performance and scalability of the Java platform," said Doug Kaewert, Vice President of Market Development and Developer Relations, Sun Microsystems. "It provides invaluable data for our mutual customers, validates Sun technologies for the CPC market, and shows the excellent scalability of the Windchill architecture."
Tests were conducted at Sun's Garrison Laboratory in Burlington, MA, with PTC support. This collaboration grew out of the two companies' long-term strategic relationship, which has included joint development work on the Windchill application from its inception. A summary of the results, along with sizing guidelines based on the results, will be available from Sun Microsystems later this quarter.
Windchill Factor! e-Series To Leverage Java 2 Platform
PTC supplied Release 4.0 of the Windchill Factor! e-Series, which is certified for the Java platform, version 1.1.7. One of the objectives of the tests was to quantify performance and scalability improvements of Windchill on the Java 2 platform, so testing was performed using both versions. Since Windchill is based upon server side Java technology code, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM(TM)) is a key factor in Windchill performance.
"The improvements of the Java 2 platform over version 1.1.7 were so impressive that we have decided to accelerate Java 2 platform certification for Windchill with Release 4.0," said Jane Wachutka, Senior Vice President of Development at PTC. "Depending on the individual task, we saw anywhere from 50 to 80 percent performance improvement with the JVM for the Java 2 platform. Equally important, the scalability across the SMP architecture was improved with the new JVM."
The Java 2 Platform from Sun provides a comprehensive, end-to-end architecture for building and deploying network-centric applications for the enterprise and consumer. The Java 2 platform, released in December of 1998, is fast, feature complete, secure and stable. More information on the Java 2 platform can be found at www.java.sun.com.
Collaborative Product Commerce: The New Frontier in Product Development
According to the Aberdeen Group, "Collaborative Product Commerce (CPC) is a new category of software and services that uses Internet technologies to tie together product design, engineering, sourcing (including manufacturing and purchasing), sales, marketing (and other staff functions), field services and customers into a global knowledge net."
Focused on all phases of a product's lifecycle -- from concept and definition to production, service, maintenance and retirement -- Windchill advances collaborative product commerce (CPC) initiatives by allowing manufacturers to collaborate over the Internet with their customers, suppliers, and partners throughout the product development and delivery process. Windchill's unique Web-based approach springboards manufacturers into the Internet age, enabling them to capitalize on enterprise expertise, customer knowledge, and supplier innovation while accelerating the global introduction of innovative products to market with reduced risk and lower costs. |
