Sun ready to roll out NetDynamics application server By Emily Fitzloff InfoWorld Electric Posted at 6:30 AM PT, Mar 5, 1999 Sun Microsystems will host an event next week in San Francisco to launch the first major makeover of the NetDynamics Application Server since acquiring the technology last year. Sun is positioning this release of the product as a foundation for building business portals -- what Sun calls the third wave of computing after client/server and the Web -- and is introducing better cross-platform and standards support. NetDynamics (ND) 5, based on Java 2 and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 1.0, delivers "beyond mega-site scalability," according to Zack Rinat, vice president of ND at Sun, and former CEO of NetDynamics, prior to the acquisition. The server can support more than 225 million Web interactions per day with a response time of less than half a second, according to Rinat. "That's more than the daily number of transactions performed by Yahoo and eBay combined," Rinat claimed. The open architecture of ND 5 enables native connectivity to major databases, enterprise management systems, and third-party platforms and tools. Sun will announce next week the ND Platform Adapter Component (PAC) for Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) for integration with COM services and components, Microsoft Transaction Server, COM clients, Windows NT, Internet Explorer, Internet Information Server, and SQL Server. "NetDynamics had a good relationship with Microsoft before the acquisition, and Sun customers are tired of the religious wars -- they want integration," Rinat said. Sun will also announce integration with Symantec's Visual Café and Computer Associates' Unicenter enterprise management platform. In addition to its existing PACs for PeopleSoft and SAP R/3, Sun is offering additional PACs for XML, LDAP, CICS, MQSeries, and AS/400. Other added standards support includes SMTP, IMAP/POP, SNMP, and Java Database Connectivity, according to the company. At least one Sun end-user said he is very excited about the technology included in ND 5. "NetDynamics helps us connect our clients with background data sources," said Jim Thannum, managing director of technology management and integration at FedEx, in Memphis, Tenn. "It lets you go in there and write an application, especially now with the EJB support, manipulate the information, and present it to our customers so they can use it to their advantage," Thannum said. Thannum said FedEx intends to use ND 5 to create a personalized business portal for its customers that will help the company create personal business-to-business relationships. The NetDynamics 5 Studio is now available to developers for $895. The NetDynamics 5 server will ship at the end of this month on Solaris and Windows NT, with prices starting at $25,000 per CPU. HP-UX and IBM AIX versions will be available in the second quarter of this year. Sun Microsystems Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is at www.sun.com. Emily Fitzloff is a senior writer at InfoWorld. From MAILER-DAEMON@cs.depaul.edu Fri Mar 5 20:29:22 1999