The Apache HTTP Server, colloquially called Apache, is the world's most widely used web server software. Originally based on the NCSA HTTPd server, development of Apache began in early 1995 after work on the NCSA code stalled. Apache played a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web, Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. Most commonly used on a Unix-like system, the software is available for a wide variety of operating systems, besides Unix and GNU+Linux, including eComStation, Microsoft Windows, NetWare, OpenVMS, OS/2, and TPF. Released under the Apache License, Apache is free and open-source software.
Founded in 1969, Software AG is an enterprise software company with over 10,000 enterprise customers in over 70 countries. The company is the second largest software vendor in Germany, the seventh largest in Europe. Software AG is traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol SOW and part of the technology index TecDAX. The company was founded in 1969 by a group of six young employees at the consulting firm AIV. ADABAS was launched in 1971 as a high performance transactional database management system. In 1979 Natural, a 4GL application development language, was launched. The company continued to open offices and subsidiaries in North America, Japan, UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Saudi Arabia. By 1987 Software AG had around 500 employees, 12 subsidiaries in Europe and offices in more than 50 countries. In 1999 Software AG was listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange and soon after the company released Tamino Information Server and Tamino XML Server.