rPath® today announced that Lumen Software, a leading provider of commercial open source software as a service (SaaS) and portal solutions, has selected rPath rBuilder® to build and deliver its enterprise-class commercial applications as virtual appliances.

Lumenation, the company’s flagship product, is a dynamic and collaborative platform built on top of Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and PHP, and is available to millions of organizations and developers to create advanced Web-based desktop applications.

"We've found that only rPath offers a turn-key product that enables us to achieve what we want when we want," said Tad Gordon, CEO of Lumen Software. "Best of all, implementation took less than one month, and our support time has been reduced from 50 percent of one full time employee to only three hours a month. With rPath, we just plug it in."

Leveraging rBuilder, Lumen can quickly build and transparently deliver its applications -- from large scale education systems to small and medium-sized business solutions -- as virtual appliances. The rPath Appliance Platform™ allows Lumen to quickly build and update its virtual appliances while maintaining total control of its solutions and reducing costs. At the same time, the rPath Appliance Platform reduces potential integration issues for Lumen customers, significantly decreasing the total cost of ownership and associated support costs.

"Today's software applications can deliver superior business value when transformed into virtual appliances," said Billy Marshall, founder and CEO of rPath. "Lumen is leading the way to better software application value by offering users a low-cost and flexible development platform for fully leveraging an open SaaS solution."