More than 87,000 companies, government agencies and other organizations rely on IBM WebSphere Application Server, which holds the worldwide marketshare lead in Java-based application servers and several related categories of infrastructure software, according to major analyst firms.

Making itself the first app server to deliver this type of simultaneous detection and recovery capability together, WebSphere Application Server Version 6, when it becomes available before the end of the year - says IBM today - will "help protect Internet business applications built on it, from a mortgage processing system to an automaker's supply chain application, with advanced autonomic computing capabilities from IBM."

Improved protection against extended application downtime, IBM announced today, is among an array of advances in the new software.

After detecting an outage, IBM WebSphere Application Server Version 6 automatically redirects data to a different designated "fail-over" server. That server can be within the same data center, or, in a more serious power failure or disaster, WebSphere Application Server can move the information via the Internet to a completely different location.

"There are many business and technical benefits to the new version of WebSphere Application Server, but none as important as the capability for a company to respond quickly and effectively to changing business conditions, which can provide a competitive advantage," said Robert LeBlanc, General Manager, IBM Application and Integration Middleware Software.

WebSphere Application Server v6 will support those Web services standards that allow more automated, less hand-coded cross-platform computing - including the WS-Security, which authenticates communications between web services, and WS-Transactions, which is designed to assure that Web Services transactions are consistently delivered.

It will also support the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 for development of interoperable Web services supporting the integration of Web services solutions.

WebSphere Application Server also supports 30 operating system platforms, says IBM, "the most in the industry." And the release additionally features new messaging capability that "performs up to five times faster and integrates seamlessly with the existing IT infrastructure," says the company.