ScaleOut Software, a leading provider of in-memory computing software, today announced the version 5.5 release of its in-memory data grid (IMDG) and in-memory computing platform. This version adds several new features targeted at .NET developers, highlighted by a new API for data-parallel computing that builds on capabilities in .NET’s widely used Task Parallel Library. Called Distributed ForEach, this new API transparently extends data-parallel computing across ScaleOut’s IMDG to handle much larger workloads than otherwise possible. It also makes distributed, data-parallel programming easy to implement for any developer familiar with the .NET programming framework.

ScaleOut Software’s distributed IMDG technology enables developers to scale their mission-critical enterprise applications for extreme performance, fast data access, and high availability — regardless of workload. With ScaleOut’s integration of in-memory computing into its IMDG, developers have important new tools that go beyond distributed caching to track the behavior of live systems (such as financial trading applications), identify actionable insights in real time, and capture perishable business opportunities. Developers familiar with the Parallel.ForEach operator in .NET can now enable this data-parallel computing pattern to handle very large workloads without the need to learn new coding techniques. The implementation delivers fast, scalable performance while avoiding network-intensive data motion and unnecessary garbage collection.

“This release represents a breakthrough in our ongoing work to make in-memory computing more accessible to .NET developers,” said Dr. William Bain, CEO and founder of ScaleOut Software. “By combining the speed and scalability of distributed, memory-based storage with an integrated compute engine, we are giving the Microsoft developer community a competitive edge while leveraging familiar computing patterns. Now mission-critical .NET applications can easily perform sub-second analysis on live data sets at scale to provide real-time feedback before the moment is lost.”

In addition to Distributed ForEach, version 5.5 adds several new features that deepen support for .NET development, including:

  • Comprehensive PowerShell management cmdlets: enable IT administrators to use .NET’s PowerShell scripts to deploy and manage ScaleOut’s IMDG.
  • Asynchronous API methods: take full advantage of .NET’s asynchronous programming model for maximizing performance on multicore systems.
  • ISO 19770-2 software tagging (SWID) on Windows: provides accurate software identification data that improves organizational security and lowers IT costs.
  • Distributed push-based notifications (preview): adds operators compatible with the popular ReactiveX library which let applications scale the throughput of real-time event processing by transparently distributing notifications across ScaleOut’s IMDG and integrated compute engine.

“We needed to find a replacement for Microsoft’s AppFabric Caching. We were very impressed with ScaleOut StateServer’s ease-of-use and high performance. However, we needed specific asynchronous .NET APIs for our solution architecture,” said Peter Šulek, senior developer for the SYNOT Group Slot Program based in the Slovak Republic. “ScaleOut Software’s development team worked closely with us to address our specific requirements and delivered a quality version 5.5 pre-release that added the async/await feature we needed to keep us on schedule. We are very pleased with the excellent performance as well as the overall stability and reliability of the platform.”

Version 5.5 includes features introduced across ScaleOut Software’s portfolio of IMDG and in-memory computing products, which include ScaleOut StateServer, ScaleOut ComputeServer, ScaleOut hServer and ScaleOut GeoServer.