Sun Microsystems has released a new platform designed to make the most of its GlassFish application server.

The firm said that its Sun GlassFish Portfolio is open source and cost-effective, and could help companies looking to run low-cost, scalable applications.

The platform includes a LAMP-based web stack with support for PHP, Ruby and the Java platform; a Web Space Server, which can be used to build collaborative work spaces, such as portals and social networking sites; and a number of management and monitoring tools.

"Companies are under huge pressure to do more with less, and are turning to scalable, supported open source technologies," said Mark Herring, vice president of Sun's Software Infrastructure division.

"With GlassFish Portfolio, Sun is providing customers with the highest-scaling, highest performance and lowest cost open source platform.

"Companies developing web applications with the Sun GlassFish Portfolio can expect to deploy quickly, and see a sevenfold improvement in application price/performance at only 10 per cent of the cost over proprietary offerings."

The firm also announced a GlassFish communications server, which it described as a telecoms-grade, open source foundation for multimedia applications. The server, which was jointly developed with Ericsson, will let service providers create and offer VoIP, instant messaging and other interactive and multimedia applications, Sun said.

The Sun GlassFish Portfolio is available immediately on a flexible subscription-based pricing model starting at $999 (£695) per server.