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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 31, 1998 - Allaire Corporation today announced ColdFusion 4.0, the next generation of its leading Web application server. ColdFusion is used by thousands of companies worldwide to unite content, transactions, and personalization into network applications for electronic commerce, business information systems, collaboration and interactive publishing.

ColdFusion is a proven development platform for integrating browser, server and database technologies into Web applications. With the latest release, Allaire is providing scalability enhancements to support complex, large-volume sites, while maintaining a commitment to developer productivity. New scalability features include support for delivering server clusters with load balancing and fail over. New productivity features include visual programming tools, enhanced team development services and remote interactive debugging. The company has also focused on improving integration with enterprise technologies and enhancing security.

"Web application development is changing the corporate software landscape with transactive content applications that solve business problems which were impractical to tackle with client/server technology," said Adam Berrey, product marketing director for Allaire. "The ColdFusion Web application server has been enabling the transformation in thousands of corporations. The 4.0 release will take Web development teams to a new level by significantly enhancing productivity and enabling large-volume, high-availability intranet applications and e-commerce sites."

"One of the fastest growing software markets is the Internet Rapid Application Development space," said Steve McClure, director of International Data Corp.’s Internet Tools Program. "To remain competitive, vendors must meet the increasing demands of Web developers for products that help them quickly build scalable solutions. ColdFusion has a large number of loyal customers, and with the 4.0 product release Allaire is delivering the features and functionality to bring their application server to an even wider audience for higher-level development projects."

Launched in 1995, ColdFusion pioneered rapid Web application development with a page-based development model that is especially well suited to the unique demands of the Web. With the new release, ColdFusion will include a powerful application server, a complete suite of visual tools, browser-based administration, and extensions that can connect to array of new technologies and legacy systems.

“I have been developing with ColdFusion since version 1.5, building cutting-edge intranet applications," said Roy Batchelor, corporate webmaster for Siemens Business Communications Systems. "In fact, the 'Wellness Incentive Program,' our online interactive health course we built for employees, received a CIO 50/50 Award from CIO Web Business Magazine. Using the next generation of the product, I look forward to extending the functionality of our intranet to a new level by incorporating all of the latest Web technologies.”

Enhanced Development Productivity
ColdFusion 4.0 provides new technology for rapid application development. The release includes powerful new visual programming tools for prototyping HTML pages. To enable better team development, ColdFusion 4.0 offers server-side source control and secure remote development for distributed teams and hosted servers. Most importantly, the new release of the ColdFusion integrated development environment, ColdFusion Studio, supports remote interactive debugging. The visual debugging tools give developers a highly productive way to analyze applications in order to identify and fix problems before they are discovered by end users.

Built-in Scalability
ColdFusion 4.0 builds on the strength of the core application server with native support for server clusters. Using an embedded version of the award-winning BrightTiger ClusterCATS, ColdFusion 4.0 supports dynamic load balancing across multiple servers to deliver scalable performance. In addition, ColdFusion 4.0 clusters offer automatic server failover for high-availability on the most demanding e-commerce sites and corporate intranets.

Extended Technology Integration
Expanding on the existing Web database integration, ColdFusion 4.0 includes native database drivers for Oracle and Sybase as well as support for OLE-DB. The new release adds additional support for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and expands connectivity to distributed object technology with support for the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). ColdFusion 4.0 also offers a new model for building extensions to both the core server and the visual tools, which means customers will be able to extend the product to handle a wide range of specialized needs.

Security Enhancements
Enhanced security features provide developers with more flexibility and control over development and deployment. ColdFusion 4.0 will integrate with network operating system security including LDAP directories and Windows NT Domains, so server administrators can take advantage of existing investments in network security. The new release also includes support for server sandbox security, a feature that allows companies to host multiple secure applications on a single server.

Pricing and Availability
The ColdFusion Web application server is licensed for deployment on Web servers as ColdFusion Server 4.0. The visual tools are licensed for development on workstations as ColdFusion Studio 4.0.

ColdFusion Server is available in two editions, Enterprise and Professional. ColdFusion Server Professional edition, $1,295, runs on Windows NT, and is licensed per server (up to 4 CPUs). ColdFusion Server Enterprise edition, $3,495, runs on Windows NT and Solaris, and is licensed per server (up to 8 CPUs). ColdFusion Studio, $395, runs on Windows NT and Windows 95/98, and is licensed per developer or per workstation.

ColdFusion 4.0 will ship within 60 days. French, German and Japanese versions will be available later in the fourth quarter. The new release can be ordered through licensed VARS, resellers and directly from Allaire. There is special upgrade pricing for ColdFusion 3.1 customers.

About Allaire
Allaire Corporation, founded in 1995 and based in Cambridge, Mass., develops, markets and supports application development and server software for a wide range of Web development projects, from building static Web pages to enterprise-wide Web applications. The company’s primary products, ColdFusion and HomeSite, enable professional developers to build high-volume, transaction-oriented Web sites for electronic commerce, business information systems, content publishing and multi-user collaboration. Allaire can be reached at (617) 761-2000, by e-mail at info@allaire.com, or via the Web at www.allaire.com

Cold Fusion is a U.S. registered trademark and Allaire and HomeSite are trademarks of Allaire Corp. All other company names, brand names and product names are trademarks of their respective holder (s).