Zeus Technology introduced at Interop a Windows-based version of its Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager (ZXTM) software, which previously ran on Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.The company claims that its Windows version - available immediately on Windows Server 2003 - is the first Windows-based traffic management/acceleration product for the Microsoft platform that performs sophisticated traffic management functions including the ability to selectively direct traffic to specific servers based on the nature of the traffic.

Zeus sells ZXTM on a software-only basis and in software-hardware packages. Software only starts at $5,000 while turnkey hardware-software packages start at $10,000.

As a Linux software developer now migrating its technology to the Windows platform, the company has a unique perspective on the Microsoft-Linux patent dispute. (At Interop, a Microsoft executive said the company is more focused on interoperability than legal disputes around Linux.)

Damian Reeves, CTO of Zeus, says his company is "relatively unconcerned" about any potential impact on Linux vendors and the Linux installed base. "There's a parallel with the IBM v. SCO dispute of a couple years ago when there was a lot of concern about whether using Linux was legal. That became a bit of a non-story and this may play out in a similar way," he says. He adds that any customers that are concerned about the issue can opt for Novell's SuSE Linux, which is covered by a Microsoft-Novell agreement that indemnifies customers against any legal liability.