Mainsoft Corporation, the cross-platform development company, has announced it is working with IBM to extend the Linux ecosystem to better enable Microsoft customers to move over to Linux. The program allows Windows Web and server applications to run on Linux across IBM's line of eServer platforms supporting IBM WebSphere Application Servers. Enterprises that prefer the security, scalability and performance of WebSphere software will have greater flexibility to choose Linux as a common operating environment, paving the way to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementations.

Mainsoft substantially reduces the investment required for .NET software vendors that have developed their products for Windows servers, to offer enterprises solutions built upon an open source stack of Linux and WebSphere. Software vendors increase their market reach and revenue opportunities without having to rewrite code or retrain Visual Studio developers in Java.

"Thanks to Mainsoft, we will be able to bring Above All Composite Application Platform to market significantly faster than if we had to rewrite the application from scratch," said Deborah Scharfetter, Vice President of Products, Above All Software. Scharfetter estimates that porting the Platform, consisting of 260,000 lines of C# code, saved $1 million and reduced time-to-deployment by six to nine months.

Mainsoft's Visual MainWin for Java EE is a single source code development solution for the .NET and J2EE platforms that integrates seamlessly into the Visual Studio .NET development environment. Visual MainWin enables C# and Visual Basic. NET developers to rapidly develop and maintain Web and server on both platforms throughout a product's lifecycle. Version 1.7 has been validated on IBM's Server Proven program. It enhances porting capabilities and comes with a comprehensive J2EE implementation of the .NET Framework that now includes Drawing, Remoting and Directory Services as well as support for Infragistics NetAdvantage 2005 Web controls. Now available, the new release also supports WebSphere Application Server 6, WebSphere Application Server 6 Express and WebSphere Application Server 5.1, and it can be used to create portal applications that can be deployed on IBM WebSphere Portal Server 5.