Database vendor Informix Software Inc. is planning to launch this year a new version of its Red Brick Decision Server product, a database engine. The product will support Intel Corp.'s 64-bit IA-64 architecture, according to an Informix executive.
Informix announced in the fourth quarter of last year the planned release of Red Brick Decision Server 6.1, as the product is called. It represents the latest version of the Informix database engine for data warehousing in Web or conventional decision-support environments.
Menlo Park, California-based Informix's Japanese customers are expected to be early adopters of the IA-64 (Intel architecture) port of Red Brick Decision Server.
"We have a significant customer base in Japan that runs on (Windows) NT, and they were the first to request support on IA-64," said Fred Ho, director of engineering for Red Brick Decision Server at Informix Software. " We expect them (the customers) to migrate to these systems over time, when they become available."
The date of the new database engine will depend on the official releases of the Itanium, Intel's first 64-bit processor, and a new version of Windows tailored for the new chip, according to Ho. "We expect to support IA-64 with Windows 2000 first, followed by a subsequent release on Linux," he added.
For the IA-64 release, Informix has contracted the migration of Red Brick Decision Server to the Itanium platform to Persistent Software Private Limited in Pune, India. This company specializes in software consultancy and development for multinational companies.
"Persistent has done contracting work for Red Brick for a number of years," said Ho. "They have the expertise and they also have access to our code. It was convenient for us to contract this work to them, as we were also busy with our current release which shipped in November," added Ho.