Digital Equipment Corp.'s Internet software division last week unveiled new versions of several software products designed to help corporations ease the transition process from legacy systems to Web technology.
The company also said it plans to release Web clustering software in July based on its AltaVista search engine technology.
The products are part of a larger strategy that Digital calls AltaVista Enterprise, a package of software and services for companies building their own intranets and extranets.
One of the products available now, AltaVista Tunnel 98, is an application enabling companies to create virtual private networks.
The new Tunnel software runs on the Window NT/Alpha platform. The previous version supported only Windows NT/Intel and Digital Unix/Alpha, said Kelly O'Ryan, Internet division marketing vice president.
New security features in Tunnel include support for Security Dynamics SecurID handheld tokens and continuous encryption re-keying. Tunnel's server can host up to 2,000 concurrent connections on Digital Unix and up to 500 concurrent connections on Windows NT, she said.
O'Ryan said the AltaVista search technology upon which Digital's Web Cluster software is based is ideal for corporations that need scalability in their networks.
"The search site has gone from nothing to 33 million hits a day without ever going down," she said. "So we've learned how to scale constantly to demand."
Web Cluster software, due out in July, will allow multiple servers to appear as a single server, providing automatic failover and increased security against external attacks.
AltaVista also unveiled new versions of three search products for intranets and non-Web systems.
AltaVista Search Developer's Kit 97B is designed for non-Web-based databases and other proprietary information repositories. It includes support for Java applications.
Both run on several platforms and will be released in May. Pricing will range from $995 to $99,995 for each.
AltaVista Search CD-ROM Toolkit enables CD-ROM publishers to include a search application on their CD. It runs on Windows 95 and NT, is priced from $995 to $62,500 and is set to ship next month.
AltaVista Tunnel 98 comes in two versions. The Telecommuter server is priced at $995. The AltaVista Tunnel 98 extranet server costs $2,495. Client software that runs on Windows 95 and Windows NT is priced at $99.
Pricing information was unavailable for Web Cluster.
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