The idea is that the highly distributed nature of web applications and the reality of virtual, globalized grid deployment, means that you have lots of moving parts scattered in places that may be continents apart. And with the need to keep these apps running 24 x 7, every instance must absolutely remain in sync. Until now, you could use mValent’s products to deal with relatively smaller groups of about a dozen or so instances at a time; the new version pushes that up by a factor of ten or more.

mValent has also automated change reporting with the new version and added a Java API so it can be integrated more tightly with external offerings such as Service Desk.

Since last August, mValent has had a resale agreement with Opsware (now an autonomous part of HP Software) to resell its offerings. The operating notion is that while Opsware’s server Automation System detects changes at the server, mValent does so inside the J2EE, Java EE, or .NET middleware stack. And there’s a third pillar, Solidcore, another startup that completes the picture by detecting changes at the OS kernel level, which Opsware also resells, and which also has a technology integration agreement with mValent. We’ve always thought that both companies would make logical acquisition candidates for Opsware, which for now is still being run by HP in incubation mode.

To date, Opsware has already concluded at least one deal that was much larger than average through the new Opsware channel, and claims to have up to a dozen more in the pipeline. That's potentially a significant number for a company that is still at the 30-customer stage. Going forward, the logical strategy is for mValent to continue focusing technology development more granularly at the middleware stack, as anything else would overlap what its much larger partner already does. It also plans more support for J2EE stacks on mainframes as well.

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