From...

by Steven Brody

SAN FRANCISCO (IDG) -- Sun Microsystems has unveiled the NetDynamics 5 applicationserver platform, billed as a cornerstone of the company's ".com" initiative to provide Web-based computing tothe enterprise.

The company touted the product's capacity for handling user loads far greater than those of theInternet's most popular sites, as well as its use as a highly effective tool that allows companies to launch Webportals integrating connecting data from consumers, suppliers, employees, and manufacturers.

"The application server connects the Web-based user to back-office applications like transaction processing,coordination, and load balancing," said Sun chief operating officer Ed Zander at a press conference here.

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NetDynamics 5 is designed to provide native connectivity to all the major databases, said Sun. The company is offering a rangeof Platform Adapter Components (PACs), including the Microsoft COM PAC, which will allow integration with Microsoft'sSQL server, Internet Explorer, Windows NT and COM clients.

NetDynamics 5 also features support for Enterprise Java Beans 1.0, a PAC to handle XML-based (extensible markuplanguage) transactions PACs, as well as CORBA-based PACs for legacy systems such as IBM AS/400 applications,MQSeries, Customer Information Control Systems (CICS), and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Sun said in-house tests showed the application server running on a 64-way Sun Enterprise 10000 to be capable of handlingover 1,500 Web-to-database transactions per second, and more than 2,600 page views per second, or 225 million page viewsper day. Sun pointed, by comparison, to the 167 million daily page views reported by Yahoo!, the world's largest portal, inDecember 1998. The Java-2 based application server could handle as many as one billion hits per day when only Java-basedbrowsers were accessing the server.

In conjunction with the NetDynamics 5 application server release, Sun announced NetDynamics 5 Studio, a portaldevelopment tool, and said it will be combining the NetDynamics software with Sun Professional Services, to providecustomers with a one-stop portal solution.

The NetDynamics 5 Studio product is priced at $895. Pricing for the NetDynamics 5 application server begins at $25,000 perCPU.

The NetDynamics 5 application server will be available on the Solaris operating environment and Windows NT platform by theend of this month, as will the PAC for COM technology. HP-UX and IBM AIX system versions and additional PACs areexpected in the next 30 to 60 days.

Sun completed its acquisition of NetDynamics in October of 1998, following an initial bid for the company in July 1998. Suncalled the acquisition a further investment into the future of Web-based computing, to be pioneered by vendors like Oracle,with its new Sun-based Business Online database outsourcing service.

Sun's applications server strategy became somewhat hazy after the acquisition, when, as a spin-off of America Online's (AOL)purchase of Netscape Communications, Sun acquired Netscape's application server software. The company has done its bestto assure consumers that the ostensibly overlapping products will both continue to be offered, but details have not beenforthcoming.

"Between Sun, AOL, and Netscape, we have a broad base of great technology and products, and we are working to integratethem into one middleware suite," said Alan Baratz, president of Sun's Java Software Division, in a press conference followingthe NetDynamics announcement. Sun's Zander, who said details of any planned integration of the two products will not be disclosed until the deal with AOL and Netscape has been finalized, added that "[Sun] can evolve the two customer bases without causing disruption."