PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise lets companies decentralise their business applications by automatically and bidirectionally synchronising, distributing and replicating corporate data and applications across multiple locations, desktops and mobile devices, while providing centralised tools for easy administration.

By distributing applications in this way, companies can eliminate the latency and outages associated with traditional centralised application deployment, while improving employee productivity by ensuring that vital applications and data are always available to them, whether they are online or offline.

With native Linux support, PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise now lets companies minimise deployment costs as they can use a pure Linux infrastructure with popular open source databases and application servers.

"Running PeerDirect on Linux servers is an ideal distributed application solution for TeamShare because we can ensure that critical business information is consistently available to the people who need it most, at a cost that is substantially lower than it would be if we were using non-Linux servers for remote deployment," says Greg Burnell, COO at TeamShare, a leader in enterprise solutions for software development and product lifecycle management.

"With PeerDirect, we can take advantage of the benefits of decentralisation without relinquishing control or threatening the integrity of our data. The addition of native Linux support means PeerDirect delivers a huge return on investment by enabling a true distributed application architecture across a low-cost Linux infrastructure."

Deployed by customers in industries as diverse as retail and aircraft maintenance, PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise is based on patented technology that allows automatic bidirectional data synchronisation between any combination of databases, including Oracle, Microsoft, Progress, IBM, Sybase and Informix, as well as the PostgreSQL open source database. This support for heterogeneous database environments means that companies can choose Linux as their remote deployment platform, even if they are running Windows or Unix in their data centres.

"While it is impossible to gauge the actual extent of Linux's growth, it is clear that the operating system is taking significant market share, both from Microsoft and other Unix variants," says Rick Parry, MD of Progress Software South Africa, which is marketing PeerDirect's solutions locally. "This is equally the case in SA, and is in line with companies' determination to reduce their IT costs.

"There is no longer any doubt that corporate clients have committed their corporate servers, databases and applications to Linux in a major show of support. This opens a requirement for these applications to be brought into the mainstream of support and system administration. This is what PeerDirect has done with this announcement.

"With native Linux support, PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise eliminates the technical and financial hurdles to deploying decentralised business applications," adds Parry. "Now, companies can justify mass deployments of this type of technology. They can deliver vastly improved performance, availability and functionality to distributed offices and remote workers across a low-cost Linux infrastructure."