Macromedia Inc. Monday announced a new version of its Flex presentation server and application framework, Flex 1.5.

The San Francisco company announced Flex 1.5 just six months after releasing the initial version of the technology and has seen positive momentum for the product, said Jeff Whatcott, vice president of product marketing at Macromedia.

Click here to read eWEEK Labs' review of Flex 1.0.

Whatcott said Flex 1.5 features new enhancements in four areas: improved data display and visualization, including a new charting component; improved styling and skinning features; support for additional deployment platforms such as Oracle Application Server 10g, IBM AIX and Fujitsu Interstage 6; and improved overall performance.

"We have done performance optimizations and have seen as much as a 50 percent improvement in performance," Whatcott said. "We think we're on a very good vector here from a performance perspective."

Click here to read how Macromedia has bolstered Flex with a new development environment.

Meanwhile, Macromedia said several large customers have adopted Flex, including Pfizer Inc., Dow Jones & Co. Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Science Applications International Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp.

"We have over 80 customers in every major region," Whatcott said. "They are building out a variety of different systems with the Flex technology. We also have several other software companies building things on Flex. We're seeing Flex jobs pop up, and it really feels like an ecosystem is being born here. We're shipping a programming framework that's brand new."

In addition, Whatcott said, "We see a tremendous amount of awakening interest in rich clients, and we think we're in a really good position to leverage this technology."

This article was first published on eweek.com.