Why subscribe to G-WAN?

Why subscribe to a G-WAN Support Plan?

Top ten reasons to use G-WAN

The middleware dilemma

A better software model: “Meritware”

1

Increased power, choice and control

2

An enterprise platform vs. a collection of components

3

Proactive security management

4

A predictable and manageable update process

5

World-class support

6

Trusted software experts

7

Long-term stability in the application infrastructure

8

Open access to source code for state of the art software

9

Extensive partner ecosystem

10

Power to influence the future of middleware

About TrustLeap
TrustLeap was founded in 2009 by the CEO of a 15-year old company headquartered in
Switzerland. In less than 4 years, G-WAN has reached a state where no other Web server or
Application server could be compared in terms of performance or features. That's what we do.

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Abstract
Many IT decision makers feel that both proprietary and open-source middleware solutions no
longer serve their needs.

G-WAN itself was created when the CEO of a 15-year old software publisher faced the
challenge of porting his company's Desktop applications to the Web – while no application
server was able to do that without a datacenter.

Besides 'empty' upgrade policies missing much needed innovations, and 'boring' product
roadmaps, the prohibitive costs generated by using inefficient software are raising as the
current solutions prove unable to:

“Harness the parallel processing power of the ever increasing number of cores
available on each chip”.

The European Union described this issue as:

“the single most important problem facing the IT industry”

because:

“there is considerable risk that the underlying business model, in which hardware
performance developments enable improved software which drives purchases of new
hardware, will be broken.”

As end-users recognized G-WAN's ability to address these “parallel bars” (The Economist),
many have requested the support of scripts in other programming languages than ANSI C.

This is what has made G-WAN increasingly compel ing for organizations wanting to leverage
their legacy applications, increase their productivity, value, and control, while benefiting from
enterprise-class support SLAs, guaranteed patches, updates and hot-fixes, and legal
assurance.

Even the most risk-averse IT organizations recognize the benefits of the ability to re-use
unmodified assets – and no other application server supports as many languages as G-WAN.

Organizations worldwide switch from technically inferior solutions in order to realize these
flexibility, scalability, performance, reliability, availability, and customer satisfaction benefits.

G-WAN does not integrate software components from myriads of vendors. This makes it
possible to get an efficient, robust, fully tested, integrated and supported middleware platform
that more complex architectures just cannot match.

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The middleware dilemma
Organizations need more from their information systems – more speed, more
features, better integration, better reliability, better stability and more flexible infrastructure
that can adapt quickly as business requirements change.

What has led to unsustainable levels of complexity is the increased need to make more and
more heterogeneous solutions col aborate.

And this complexity kil s the performance that enterprises absolutely need to stay competitive.

Instead of wasting much of their time managing issues of scale and complexity, people using
G-WAN can focus on their real needs: like analyzing business requirements, selecting or
developing applications, and preparing for upcoming strategic projects.

The real cost of ownership of a middleware has little to do with its licensing, what makes a
solution better than another is the ability for users to do much more work:

–

in much less time (no hidden complexity, no pointless configuration, interfaces, etc.),

–

at a much lower cost (less servers, less electricity, less floor space).

When it comes to determining which middleware solutions are right for an organization, three
categories of choices are commonly evaluated by an IT enterprise:

–

proprietary software from vendors such as IBM or Oracle are more complex than
necessary to use, manage and maintain – and they do not scale on multicore.

–

open source frameworks like JBoss made of a col ection of components modified and
assembled to build a middleware platform incompatible with the original software.
Complexity and incompatibilities boost consulting, training, and support fees – and, on
the top of that, they do not scale on multicore.

–

G-WAN is available for free. Support is available via a paid subscription. G-WAN
combines innovation (unparalleled efficiency and ease of use) and transparency
(relying on third-party content generators such as C/C++, C#, Java...), while mitigating
the risks by letting people use the programming languages they know .

Given constant IT budget constraints and the rise of costs, subscribing to software is a great
way to reduce the barrier to adoption.

And there's no lower barrier than a gratis program.

G-WAN's founder decided that nobody would have to suffer the pain of lacking the tool that he
had to create because al the other solutions were not interested by efficiency.

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A Better Software Model: “Meritware”

Open source has been growing in popularity on the promise to correct the problems found in
proprietary solutions. They claimed that they would “power innovation” and “reduce the
traditional barriers of obtaining and using software”. They explained that:

“the price for these benefits is that the user must take responsibility for management
and ongoing maintenance.”

Yet, open source solutions did not outperform proprietary software. Not on simplicity, not on
efficiency, and not even on productivity.

But they kept their promise about the mandatory fees and extended it to unknown summits.

They also erected new barriers for competitors by removing any meaningful level of
comments in their “open” source code, by providing incomplete and erroneous “open”
documentation, and by using the same anti-competitive tactics they supposedly fought.

This results in users being unable to trust that open source does any better than entrenched
proprietary software incumbents.

G-WAN differs in that users contribute with significant feedback resources to ensure that they
have the solution they need.

This capability is delivered to customers via a subscription model. Subscriptions renew on an
annual basis. Because a vendor risks losing business after one year unless every customer is
happy with the provided service, it has a strong incentive to keep customer satisfaction high.

And, not only we say it but the difference with other players since 2009 is striking:

–

G-WAN is faster more scalable than any other solution,

–

G-WAN is far easier to use than any other solution,

–

G-WAN offers more programming languages than any other solution.

Customers pay an annual subscription fee for G-WAN, because the we offer value to the user
above and beyond that offered by any other player.

What is the nature of this value?

Mainly no reliance on 'strategic partnerships', poisonous patents, or 'groups of interests'.
This is what lets G-WAN do it right.

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1. Increased power, choice and control

G-WAN gives you more power because you can use more language stacks – an even make
them work al to produce different parts of a same document.

G-WAN gives you more choice, because you don't have to change your habits (or your app.
server) to try or involve another language that may better fit a specific task (i.e. C or Java).

G-WAN returns control over your IT projects because you no longer have to fight with
unnatural obstacles like pointless complexity to achieve strategic business goals.

The optional subscription creates a balanced situation where users decide to participate to
the active life of a product instead of paying just because there is no other choice.

2. An Enterprise Platform vs. a collection of components

Most middleware projects consist of many independent projects, each with its own release
schedule, versions, and software dependencies – differences that can not only generate
errors but which always create inefficiency as compared to a monolithic solution.

Monolithic solutions have gained a bad reputation in the past because of their huge size. But
there is no such a thing with G-WAN which weights a couple of hundreds of kilobytes.

And a smal footprint does not mean less features: any community contributor may build new
features and leverage the 15-language ecosystem created by G-WAN.

Unlike other solutions, G-WAN is not excluding other solutions. There is no religious
battle about what technology works better than another: users have this choice at all
times, for all tasks – and they can even chose to use all the languages rather than
using one to do the same job.

G-WAN leverages more existing solutions than any other application server in existence.

Our motto is “let people decide what is good for them”. But G-WAN being the lightest and the
most efficient organ of the chain, it is not contributing to the bloat. And G-WAN's ultra-fast
interfaces with so many third-party tools make it the right choice as a front-end server.

3. Proactive security management

Experienced security experts know (first-hand) that nothing beats simplicity. In contrast,
complexity makes it difficult and often impossible to asses the security of any system. This is
why reducing the number of components must be (like for efficiency) a top priority.

Every IT vendor claims to proactively monitor security issues that might affect customers’

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application stacks, and to take swift actions accordingly. This is a responsible policy,
but does it justify such a high frequency of security breaches? Why are the same
security breaches seen again and again – in the same products – for decades?

Where stand security breaches in a business model fueled on paid updates and patches?

G-WAN is the only server that never got a security breach since its release in year 2009.
G-WAN program updates are free. Support has to be charged as it takes time to help people.

What works best? The patch fury – or the lack of security breaches?

What costs less? Cleaning-up a data leak – or not having any?

4. A predictable and manageable update process

While middleware projects are constantly being developed and enhanced, users fail to see
how those decades of development better serve their needs.

All solution vendors provide updates:

–

fixing problems according to ranked priorities ,

–

providing minor updates on a regular schedule ,

–

stating what has been addressed and what remains to be done,

–

patching critical defects as quickly as possible ,

–

thoroughly regression testing any updates to the software ,

–

guarantees on backwardly compatible updates within minor version releases .

But what seems to be a constant in this industry is the lack of any disrupting innovation. Just
like if program updates were only aimed at maintaining a status-quo.

As G-WAN has shown, disruption does not necessarily mean changing anything in its habits,
knowledge, infrastructure or code bases.

G-WAN did not invent another proprietary configuration files cryptic format.
G-WAN did not impose a new programming language to scale on multicore.
G-WAN delivers its promises without any lock-in: “do as usual, only better!”

Disruption means doing the same things so much better than before that people can't ignore
the difference.

What makes G-WAN updates so valuable is the fact that they deliver in a few years the value
that no other middleware platform has provided in decades.

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5. World-class support

The guys behind the best technology obviously know better than the vendors of the
lagging solutions – how long-established, reputable and powerful they can be.

For those among us who need more substance than marketing, it makes sense to work with
the team which has demonstrated its ability to deliver the best product.

And when you consider that G-WAN has been created and developed without the pharaonic
budgets invested by the competition then the feat reaches yet another level of legitimacy.

G-WAN considers support as a critical asset: reliable user feedback, when not flatly
dismissed, give products a chance to focus on the real-life needs of people.

In contrast, many vendor consider support as a nuisance, and their offers reflect this
contempt for why in the first place customers want to use a product: solving problems.

This is why G-WAN provides solutions to its users. This goes as far as to write code
snippets to let users understand how to resolve a particular problem. And not many
players can claim to know better.

Several factors drive the high quality of G-WAN support plans, including:

–

When detached from program updates, the subscription model encourages superior
customer care because there is no other way to keep users than customer satisfaction.
In contrast, users who have to pay for support plans which include program updates
have no choice but to also pay for support – even if the service is not useful.

–

Access to best-in-class software engineers makes support plans reach another level.
G-WAN does not hire “highly trained support technicians”: the software engineers who
make G-WAN rotate on-demand to make sure that everyone understands what people
expect from G-WAN. With G-WAN support plans, you know what you pay for.

–

Open source vendors use to claim that their “openness” helps problem solving. But
open source servers perform and scale poorly, they are incredibly complex and they
support few programming languages. They al behave similarly because their R&D
dept. relies on “copy and paste”. It is surely harder to lead, but we believe that the
rewards are worth the pain.

–

Unlimited support optimizes problem solving. With G-WAN, there is no limit to the
number of support incidents. If you really received the help you needed, then there is
no reason to keep asking for help. Both sides benefit from true support: feedback
leverages a product and user loyalty grows when difficulties have been resolved.

Our goal is to make people more capable and autonomous – not less capable.

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6. Trusted advice from software experts

G-WAN being at the leading edge of advances in parallel programming, optimization
and server technologies, we are a trustworthy choice.

In contrast, trusted vendors claim that the cumulative experience of their hundreds of
thousands of developers, their bil ions of dollars invested in R&D and their established
product lines make them deserve your trust.

Well, if it was the case then G-WAN would not have had to be created. G-WAN came
to fill the gap that the hundreds of thousands of developers, the billions of dollars
invested in R&D and the established product lines left wide open during decades.

When customers ask help from the G-WAN team, our first question is:

“What is your input, and what is your expected output?”

Then only we can talk about how many servers you believe must be used to reach your goal.

We do not sell hardware (while G-WAN clearly makes multicore servers sell better, it allows to
do more on less servers), we do not sell software (G-WAN is a freeware), we sell know-how.

The kind of know-how that is able to make unique things like G-WAN.

7. Long-term stability in the application infrastructure

To ensure long-term stability of infrastructures, vendors guarantee that each new release of
their product wil be fully supported with security updates.

For example, Ubuntu normal 6-month releases get patches for 18 months. Long-term support
(LTS) releases come every 2 years and enjoy a longer support life (3 years for desktop and 5
years for server).

G-WAN does not have this problem because it is compatible with older versions. Features are
added, not removed. And the lack of cryptic configuration files makes it impossible to change
their syntax, like Apache and others felt it was needed.

We reckon that, here again, dealing with a 200 KiB executable makes a lot of things easier.

There's no planned obsolescence because we don't have to.

8. Open access to source code for state of the art software

Open source software vendors say that open source software benefits from everyone’s
access to the source code in its design and its implementation. Some suggest that open
source makes security audits easier to perform.

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Why then vendors have a free open source 'community version' and a payable
(closed-source) 'enterprise version' of the same product?

Why security breaches are found by researchers working on the executables rather than on
the source code? Why aren't open source projects better in quality, efficiency and security
than proprietary products?

Beyond this, having access to the source code is of little use when one has to face tens of
mil ions of lines of uncommented source code, most of it being written to be as unreadable as
possible to keep me-too players at bay.

Even open source operating systems like Linux rely on proprietary hardware and firmware.
Computers, cell phones, TVs, cars, planes are not open source. All use proprietary software
and we could hardly do our job without those tools.

What makes software safe or reputable is not its distribution model – it's is inherent qualities.

9. Extensive partner ecosystem

With G-WAN, enterprises which use Java can do so. The ones who use C# can do so. The
ones who use PHP can do so. The ones who use C can do so. G-WAN offers no less than 15
different programming languages.

Nobody in this market has extended a server ecosystem as far as... the G-WAN newcomer.

This is part of our idea of being relevant for our users. We have no patent agenda to push and
oppose to our competitors. We feel that doing the job right is what has a real value, for us and
for all the users who benefit from our research and development.

10. Power to influence the future of middleware

Few solutions are customer-driven: who asked to have so complex and inefficient products?

Some vendors might accept to conduct custom-developments but this is seen as a marginal
activity. Their job, as they see it, is to occupy the place, and to defend that place.

In contrast with that view, G-WAN has only one mission: to do better what is already done,
and to do what can be done and which has not been done yet.

Here, customer feedback is seen as the best way to do both things. Not only we listen but we
find ways to integrate your wishes to a form that makes sense for the other users.

G-WAN reached its status of “technical reference” in the server market because of you, the
guys using it and telling us how G-WAN could be more useful for what you do.

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