Merant has formed a strategic agreement with Allaire Corporation. Under the terms of the agreement, Allaire will integrate Merant’s DataDirect technology with the new Linux versions of ColdFusion, providing Allaire customers with secure high-availability data integration across Linux-based Web applications.

“As Allaire customers move into high-end global 2000 projects, they are demanding the same robust feature set on Linux that they expect with any other Web application development platform,” said Jack Lull, vice president of development for Allaire. “Merant’s DataDirect technology was a natural fit for Allaire, providing exceptional performance, scalability, and a broad range of database support.”

ColdFusion has enabled more than 3,500 companies worldwide to create a variety of transaction-intensive Web solutions on intranets and public Internet sites, including e-commerce, content management, and business automation.

“As the market leader in data access and integration, Merant is proud to enable high-quality connectivity for Allaire’s ColdFusion application,” said Michael Consoli, Merant senior vice president and general manager of DataDirect. “By leveraging Merant DataDirect technology, Allaire customers can now link ColdFusion Web applications on Linux to a variety of enterprise data stores, with the scalability and distributed transaction support required in e-business solutions.”