Best tools to get internet plumbing right

By ADAM GIFFORD

Included in the bag of reading material for an iPlanet seminar in Surfers Paradise was a handy tool pouch containing screwdrivers, allen keys, sockets and needle nose pliers.

After two days of PowerPoint presentations, that introductory gift seems the best lead into what this Sun Microsystems-Netscape alliance is all about.

"It's a product company. It's providing products which are the plumbing for the internet," said Duncan Bennett, iPlanet's managing director for Australia and New Zealand.

The alliance's credentials to be an internet infrastructure supplier are solid. Sun transformed itself from a hardware company to one with a strong software story with its invention of Java, the "write once, run anywhere" programming language, which was an important step in turning the internet into a business technology.

Netscape pioneered the worldwide web browser, until Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer and destroyed its core business. Netscape, now a part of America Online, sought other revenue sources from creating the technology business needs for secure internet commerce.

The iPlanet platform, which sits on top of traditional operating systems and network and systems infrastructure, consists of five layers.

At the bottom is unified user management services, which includes directory and administration software, PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) security and policy.

On top of that are application and integration services - the web server and application server, business-to-business integration tools, application integration and business process automation.

Then come communications services such as web mail, calendar, wireless, instant messaging and unified messaging, portal serves and, finally, commerce services - the software to build digital marketplaces and procurement systems, do online sales, bill payment and presentation and trade facilitation.

Steve Furney-Howe, vice-president for Asia Pacific, said the region was leading worldwide IT growth and iPlanet was reflecting that.

Despite being only two years old, the alliance had more than 300 staff operating out of 11 offices. Add in partners, such as New Zealand's SolNet, and the number of people working on iPlanet solutions jumped to over 1000.

Asia Pacific was expected to provide 5 per cent of iPlanet's revenues, but the first year accounted for 12 per cent and for the year ending June it was expected to contribute between 16 and 18 per cent to total revenue.

"Two-thirds of our business last year was service providers building up their infrastructure," said Mr Furney-Howe. "This year we're seeing a bigger mix of major organisations digitising their business, doping things like building internal portals and customer and supplier portals."

He said iPlanet was making six big technology bets, assuming that customers wanted one-stop user management, a seamless platform to deploy services, wireless and instant messaging, portals everywhere, dynamic commerce and integrated open solutions.

He said iPlanet Directory, the foundation for its user system, delivered between two and 10 times the performance of competing directories.

Its web server was being adopted by service providers who found freeware could not cope with their growth, and its integration tools allowed legacy solutions like EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to be incorporated into web commerce.

The iPlanet Web Server's biggest test so far came on the night of the United States election, when it was called on to serve up 150 million page views from the CNN site.

Fastest revenue growth is from portal software, with corporations and governments adopting the iPlanet toolset to build an online presence.

Indeed, it appears iPlanet, with its philosophy of open interfaces and integration of legacy systems, is succeeding in this area where specialist portal providers with more proprietary systems are struggling.

The alliance has just extended the capabilities of its iPlanet Portal Server with the release of a Mobile Access Pack, which allows users to access the full spectrum of portal services from any internet-capable device.



Mike Lowe from SolNet, the NZ agent for Sun and iPlanet, said about 20 firms had iPlanet projects going on.



* Adam Gifford travelled to Australia as a guest of iPlanet.

Links:

iPlanet

Solnet