BURLINGTON, Mass., Dec. 9 -- OpenLink Software announces immediate availability of the Cloud Edition of Virtuoso, its industry-acclaimed Universal Server: an integrated, standards-compliant server platform that includes a built-in SQL RDBMS, RDF DBMS (Quad Store), content management server, and web application server, among other features.

"The Web's potential as a globally distributed information space that plugs into disparate databases has never been in question. What has remained unclear, is how a federated Web of linked databases would be delivered in a manner consistent with the Web's core architecture, without compromising its simplicity," said Kingsley Idehen, founder and CEO of OpenLink Software. "Enterprises and individual Web users currently struggle with data portability, accessibility, and privacy challenges, arising from exponentially growing data across disparate data sources. The Cloud Edition of Virtuoso delivers a powerful but easy to use solution."

The new product release leverages the solution packaging and deployment prowess of the Amazon EC2 cloud-computing platform by delivering a pre-configured and tightly tuned edition of Virtuoso on a Fedora Linux-based Amazon Machine Image (AMI), ready for immediate use (post initialization).

Integration & Lookup Hub for a Federated Web of Linked Data Spaces

All editions of Virtuoso deliver a federated data-space platform that plugs naturally into the Web via HTTP. Virtuoso enables organizations and individual users to construct their own points of presence on the Web without relinquishing control or privacy to third parties.

The bundled open-source OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) application suite makes it easy for Web and enterprise users to transparently and unobtrusively integrate new data with existing silos such as weblogs, wikis, bookmarks, social networks, calendars, syndicated feeds, etc.

As expected, all data (SQL, RDF, or XML) processed through or created within a Virtuoso AMI remains under the total control of the AMI instance owner.

Simplified Semantic Web Presence

When deployed on Amazon EC2, Virtuoso and ODS reduce the previously complex process of establishing Semantic Web presence to the simple task of creating a user account.

This immediately results in an OpenID, tightly coupled to a FOAF (Friend-Of-A-Friend)-based profile page. All user-generated data may also be exposed through a SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities)-based social-network -- giving the user full control over who else can see which pieces of their data.

Immediate Access to Powerful Knowledge bases from the Linked Open Data Cloud

As a vital contribution to the momentum behind the burgeoning Web of linked data, Virtuoso provides a simple deployment mechanism for highly integrated knowledge bases emerging from the Linking Open Data community. For example, it is now possible to deploy personal or service-specific renditions of DBpedia within 1.5 hours, compared to an 8-22 hour effort when performed from scratch.

A New Platform for a New Era of Web Entrepreneurship

Virtuoso for EC2 provides a natural fit for entrepreneurs seeking to cost-effectively exploit the third wave of the Web's evolution, by combining scalable data-management and granular access to structured data with the new variable-cost "pay as you go" datacenter model that underlies the EC2 platform.

Virtuoso EC2 Product Information Page: http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/wiki/main/Main/VirtuosoEC2AMI.

About OpenLink Software

OpenLink Software Inc. is a leading technology innovator and enabler of the Semantic Web, with strengths in universal platform, protocol, schema and data access, transformation, hosting, and management. OpenLink's product lines include: the flagship high-performance and secure Virtuoso Universal Server for integrating and managing multiple protocols, Web services and data sources; Virtuoso Sponger for transforming all varieties of data forms to RDF; OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) for integrating all forms of collaborative Web apps while exposing them through a single Semantic Web interface; the comprehensive OpenLink Ajax Toolkit (OAT), and related database drivers and middleware. Both commercial and open source versions are available.

OpenLink's strengths derive from an unmatched experience and commitment to real-world practices. Industry standards supported include SQL, XML, RDF, RDF Schemas, ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OLEDB, SPARQL, GData, XQuery, XPath, XSLT, XML/A, OpenSearch, WebDAV, HTTP, NNTP, Atom Publishing, RSS, SOAP, GRDDL and more. 32- and 64-bit platform support includes Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, IBM AIX, HP-UX, and other UNIX flavors. Hosting and integration support is provided for all leading RDBMs, leading triple-stores, LAMP applications, and many more.

OpenLink Software is privately held, with offices in the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom. It has been the leading provider and technology innovator in the universal data-access middleware market since 1993; over 10,000 companies currently use its products worldwide. The company Web site is www.openlinksw.com/.