Application server platforms are changing the way businesses deploy and integrate e-Business applications. By building services and tools, companies avoid having to build core infrastructure services into each application. Application server platforms play a crucial role in today's multi-tier computing infrastructures, enabling improved flexibility, scalability, and reliability across all tiers. By the same token, application servers play a crucial role in all aspects of the environment, particularly in the area of performance.

A leading financial services company recently benchmarked the performance of servers based on Intel® and Sun* processors, using BEA WebLogic* Server 5.1. A Java*-based workload was designed to emulate the real-word operating environment of the financial firm, using a two-way Intel® Pentium® III Xeon" processor-based server and a comparable two-way Sun server. The results of the tests were extraordinary: the Intel-based servers delivered significantly better performance and value across the board. Among the findings:

• The Intel-based server was able to handle over three times as many client requests as the similarly configured Sun serverwhile running the same platform-independent workload.
• Even under the most demanding conditions, the Intel-based server responded to an average request more than 50% faster than the Sun server.
• Dividing server cost by the peak throughput for each system, it was found that the Intel-based server delivered 5-1/2 times better price/performance than the Sun server when under the most intense workloads.

Read the entire detailed white paper, titled "Intel®-Based Servers Deliver Top Performance for Java*-Based e-Business"