The power behind the portal

You can sum up Sun’s vision for the future direction of enterprise software in one word: portal. In a teleconference on October 21, Dr. Alan Baratz, president of Sun’s Java Software Division, first espoused Sun’s intentions: “[Portals] are about providing software and services that link. Today they link browsers to information. They allow all of us sitting at home or in our workplace with a PC or a desktop device and a browser to be able to connect to a sea of information.”

And in the past six weeks or so, that message hasn’t changed. In fact, the message has only intensified here at the Java Business Expo conference, with Sun’s official “coming-out party” as a true enterprise software provider.

At the Enterprise Software event on December 9, Dr. Baratz talked about the current portals, such as Yahoo, Excite, and Netcenter, which provide services like e-mail, weather reports, consumer information, and news, but not your typical line of enterprise applications. He believes, however, that this model will change.

Dr. Baratz envisions a day in which companies provide portals — not to the Web public at large, but to their employees, customers, suppliers, and partners. These portals won’t provide the general suite of services that characterize such commercial portals as Yahoo. Instead, they’ll provide targeted trade news, company information, employee benefits information, and access to Web-enabled enterprise applications. And users will have access to this information and these applications anywhere, and any time they can get their hands on a browser. Portals will become, in his words, “the core of the enterprise software computing environment.”

Chances are he’s right. While most portals are hand crafted, a small handful of start-ups have appeared with sights firmly fastened specifically on the enterprise portal market (rather than on the general application server market). Sun, itself, not only preaches the portal line, but is building an employee portal through which employees will be able to access company information no matter their physical location. Other companies, including Citibank Mortgage, Day-Timers, Inc. and Southern California Gas, are deploying portals as well — all built upon Sun enterprise software.

Sun’s plans are clear. It hopes to position itself firmly in the center of this market, both as an end-to-end solutions provider (with products spanning glass house to embedded devices), and as the purveyor of the preferred platform upon which the products will be built (the Java platform).

The role of application servers

Sun’s acquisition of NetDynamics reveals a lot about its intended approach to the enterprise portal market. The company believes the key to the nascent market is the application server (the power behind the portal).

Application servers live on the middle tiers of n-tier application architectures. They host business logic and consolidate the information provided by back-end systems and databases into a form that has real business meaning — hence the term “application” in application server.

As a result of their heritage (many application servers grew from Web development tools and Web servers) application servers excel at putting data and business logic on the Web.

The application server market is currently a crowded one (30 plus vendors claim to offer products that are application servers), but it’s growing dramatically. The market is expected to reach billion by the year 2001.

Sun’s NetDynamics acquisition and what it means

Sun’s acquisition of NetDynamics clearly indicates their desire to be a player in the enterprise software arena. One of the first to inhabit this space, the NetDynamics product is a clear-cut application server. It provides the linkage from the browser and the Web to enterprise applications and services.

NetDynamics, of course, supports Java technology and with Sun now in the picture, it can be expected to support all of Sun’s Java enterprise APIs.

The acquisition also comes as Sun is further opening up the Java 2 product. While Sun is still clearly interested in making money licensing the JDK, it is also clear that they intend to pursue other revenue streams related to Java technology. The enterprise application server market is an excellent example.

Interestingly, the acquisition of NetDynamics also indicates a possible change in Sun’s attitude toward things Microsoft. In the October teleconference regarding the acquisition of NetDynamics by Sun Microsystems, Dr. Baratz had the following to say in response to a question about Scott McNealy’s generally acerbic attitude toward Microsoft and its products (specifically Windows NT).

“We need to be really clear on this — the NetDynamics applications server is critical to Sun’s software strategy. And a core component of Sun’s software strategy is products that are delivered and well-supported across all hardware and operating system platforms in the enterprise.”

Zack Rinat, the new vice president of the NetDynamics business unit, said in the same teleconference, “We need to learn the core need and we are committed both morally and contractually to continue to support NT.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that in addition to support for Enterprise JavaBeans, the next release of NetDynamics software will include COM support.

Eventually, NetDynamics may be closely integrated with the Solaris operating system itself as well as being sold as a separate product. This would be a reasonably response to Microsoft’s building application server functionality into Windows NT. Sun must ensure that the Solaris software environment is a competitive player in the enterprise server market. software environment is a competitive player in the enterprise server market.

Ultimately, Sun is looking at tackling the Global 1000 business customers (whose existing enterprise infrastructure is extremely complicated, antiquated, and/or just plain confusing). It’s also working with new companies that are looking into providing a portal but lack an existing infrastructure. Its goal is to convince these customers to go with an off-the-shelf application server rather than building something on their own.

Who’s using Sun’s enterprise solutions now?

Sun’s enterprise software debut on December 9 showcased some of the best examples from Sun’s new NetDynamics portfolio.

Southern California Gas deployed an energy brokerage system called Energy Marketplace on top of the NetDynamics application server platform. It was built on a tight budget, without scores of developers, and in a time frame aggressive even by Web standards (eight weeks). The resulting portal was first deployed on a small scale and is now in the process of being more widely deployed.

Day-Timers, Inc., looking to expand from its core business onto the Web, selected NetDynamics for its Day-Timers Digital Web site. The challenge was to dynamically integrate content from sources on the Web (such as television schedules, concert information, and related event information) with the private calendars created and maintained by the users of the system, which are expected to number in the millions.

Citibank Mortgage selected NetDynamics after a thorough review of application server products. They approached the problem of developing a portal from the architectural and technological side first, and identified NetDynamics as a key to their success.

Where does Sun go from here?

The portal is ultimately only the catalyst. In a brief conversation after the end of the presentation at the enterprise event, Dr. Baratz indicated that Sun’s enterprise vision extends beyond the portal. Because with the portal in place, enterprise customers are then in a better position to further integrate backend systems, and to extend them in new directions.