Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced the immediate availability of Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7, previously code-named "Blackstone," the fastest, easiest way to build and deploy powerful Internet applications. Developers are already embracing the latest version of the ColdFusion application server, and are  now solving development challenges with new printable web content, rich forms, more flexible deployment options, and integrated, structured business reporting.  ColdFusion MX 7 also provides new cost-effective and powerful innovations to interact with mobile phones using short message service (SMS) text messaging, which allows developers to create a new class of Internet applications for the mobile world.
 

View Dave Gruber With Charles Brown Live on SYS-CON.TV

"Building on the legacy of revolutionizing application development, ColdFusion MX 7 once again makes the hard development problems easy with groundbreaking capabilities and elegant implementation," said David Mendels, general manager, Macromedia. "ColdFusion MX 7 provides organizations with the solution to rapidly create Internet applications that solve today's business problems faster, deliver clear return on investment, and bring a better and more compelling experience for the end user."

ColdFusion MX 7 opens the door to the mobile Internet by providing an easy, cost-effective, and powerful way to securely extend applications to mobile phone users through SMS text messaging. Applications can also be created for access through instant messaging clients. These new deployment options enable companies to solve a broad range of emerging business needs for today's highly mobile workforce by extending the Internet beyond the browser to a wide range of mobile devices.

ColdFusion MX 7 lets developers build more powerful Internet applications in less time than ever before. New rich forms technology helps save time and effort by empowering developers to easily create superior online forms without having to code all of the presentation-tier logic. Developers can also transform dynamic web content into well-formatted, printable documents in either Macromedia FlashPaper or PDF formats.

New business reporting features in ColdFusion MX 7 allow developers to generate affordable, structured business reports in the context of web applications, and give users access to important business data in easy-to-understand formats.

ColdFusion runs as either a standalone application server or on top of leading J2EE application servers, including Macromedia JRun, IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, and Sun ONE, bringing the product's legacy of productivity to the scalable, standards-based Java platform. ColdFusion MX 7 provides a new Enterprise Manager that enables administrators to quickly and easily create multiple application instances and provides new levels of high availability and performance.  The open architecture of ColdFusion MX 7 continues to make it easy to deploy applications on Windows, Unix, and Linux platforms.

"ColdFusion MX 7 promises to be the most developer-friendly version of ColdFusion yet," said Joel Cox, IT project manager, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. "Much of the tedium of interface development is alleviated, allowing developers to spend their time working on the underlying business logic."

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

According to Gruber, who appeared today on SYS-CON.TV with MXDJ editor-in-chief Charles Brown, ColdFusion MX 7 is immediately available in English for purchase in two editions. The Standard Edition includes two CPUs for $1,299. The Enterprise Edition includes two CPUs for $5,999. Volume discounts and government and education licensing are also available. A localized version for Japanese is expected to ship later this year.



To purchase or learn more about ColdFusion MX 7, please visit http://www.macromedia.com/go/cfmx7/.
To subscribe to ColdFusion Developer's Journal, please visit http://www.sys-con.com/sub.cfm

DEVELOPERS PRAISE NEW FEATURES IN MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION MX 7

American Academy of Neurology

"We intend on using ColdFusion MX 7 to provide critical PDF-based reports in our meeting planning application, which helps us prepare all aspects of our members' annual meeting. ColdFusion MX 7 reporting is an impressive addition that allows us to quickly develop and deliver complex reports through the web to our business users. In addition, we will be using the new rich forms feature to provide a better interface to this application for our staff members as well as our annual meeting presenters. ColdFusion MX 7 is spot-on in terms of the features we need."

- Kurt Wiersma, web applications developer, American Academy of Neurology

ACD Direct

"Hand in hand with some of the largest PBS stations across the United States, ACD Direct in partnership with CallsWithoutWalls developed an advanced donation management system that that takes in over $10 million a year, through hundreds of thousands of phone calls.  Our entire agent base is the "work-at-home" model, and with ColdFusion, we were able to provide a lightning-fast, cross-browser, easy-to-use interface to our agents.  After upgrading to ColdFusion MX 7, I was thrilled with its ability to be used right out of the box. All of my current applications ran perfectly, and within a few minutes I was already transforming content into well-formatted documents and experiencing PDF and FlashPaper nirvana. ColdFusion MX 7 continues to set the standard by offering advanced technologies that far exceed our expectations."

- Patrick R. Buchanan, chief technology officer, ACD Direct

America First Credit Union

"ColdFusion MX 7 is the culmination of nearly everything that I have wanted out of this software. We will definitely upgrade our applications that currently run on ColdFusion MX 6.1 to take advantage of Flash forms and rich printable documents with FlashPaper and PDF. With ColdFusion MX 7, we can do more work in less time and give our users a much better experience than they could get anywhere else."

- Nathan Petersen, web architect, America First Credit Union

Amkor Technology

"Currently our external website, intranet, and customer extranet all run on ColdFusion MX 6.1. We already plan to give our site search engine a major overhaul with ColdFusion MX 7. This new version represents a significant leap forward in the application development platform space. ColdFusion MX 7 software makes it easier than ever for developers to focus on creating exciting and innovative applications."

- Rob Brooks-Bilson, senior manager, Amkor Technology

City of Davis, California

"PDF output is the first ColdFusion MX 7 feature that will be rolled out in our applications, so we can deliver press releases, municipal code, police activity logs, and city council and commission agendas to our citizens using the new rich forms feature. The ability to dynamically create PDF documents of our web content will really get our users excited."

- Seth Duffey, webmaster, City of Davis, California

County of San Diego, Department of Child Support Services

"ColdFusion MX 7 adds real end-user value because of the ways it enables us to capture and present information. We will employ ColdFusion MX 7 to drastically improve our printing by using the new document-printing feature, and begin the task of updating our application to use rich forms. Implementing the software on a J2EE application server has never been easier, allowing us to derive all the benefits of J2EE with the scripting ease of ColdFusion."

- Darius J. Fattahipour, senior IT engineer, County of San Diego, Department of Child Support Services

InvestEdge

"ColdFusion MX 7 is an incredible release. We already plan on moving our enterprise-level, wealth-management, and brokerage platforms to ColdFusion MX 7. By using XForms, we'll be able to create skins that will let us use the controls in our application with just a single line of code. ColdFusion has always been an enterprise-level platform, but these new features may make it THE enterprise platform."

- RC Collins, chief technology officer, InvestEdge