Internet 25: best of class! - 25 companies that provide enterprise-class Internet software are evaluated - includes related articles on corporate Web sites, Mosaic graphical Web browser, making money with start up companies and tribute to panel of evaluators - Company Business and Marketing - Cover Story

Software Magazine, April, 1997 by Colleen Frye

Our panel of experts grades the leaders in providing enterprise-class Internet software.

Cohesion from chaos. That's the mission of the majority of companies selected for Software Magazine's Internet 25 providing infrastructure-type products that will make the Internet less chaotic for users and a more cohesive platform for doing business.

That is also Software Magazine's mission in putting together this list of software vendors: to identify for IT decision makers key trends, products and companies amid the chaos of today's Internet market. Corporate enterprises are making some big bets on software vendors and technologies, some of them very young. "We think the Internet is now ready as a prime business backbone," says Dave Donahue, president of e.Benefits Inc., Hartford, Conn., a business of Aetna Inc.

The companies in Software Magazine's Internet 25 are helping Aetna and others to build on that backbone. They were chosen by our 10-member panel of electors for making a significant contribution to the Internet market, as well as bringing a high-value proposition to the corporate enterprise.

Our panel members brought a variety of perspectives to the task, representing the financial and venture capital arena, market research, industry analysts and corporate IT. The panel members nominated enterprise software vendors, and then graded them on categories such as value proposition, strength of management and development teams, and execution of vision.

Their selections reflect not only the significance of pioneers such as Netscape and Sun's JavaSoft, and desktop kingpin Microsoft's late but impressive grasp on this market, but also the significance of the next wave of technology -- enabling technology.

The software vendors developing enabling technologies such as security, broadcasting and "push" technology, transaction processing middleware, management tools and development tools, will help transform the Internet from a billboard to a business zone.

"The next wave of infrastructure is enabling technologies, including enabling software," says Paul Deninger, CEO of Broadview Associates and one of the Internet 25 electors. "The issue is the Internet as a business tool. Fundamental to that is privacy, security, usability." Broadcasting, or "push" technology, is also emerging as a key enabler. "Right now early adopters of the Internet like chaos," says Deninger. "But companies like Yahoo exist because people want to make order out of chaos. The ordering of chaos, making the Internet accessible and the technology useful and simple to people in productive ways, is critical." Adds Deninger, "Push technology is one of those enablers; it allows people to use the Internet for receiving information in the way they want." The top 10 vendors of the Internet 25 -- those with the highest cumulative average for all categories -- are, in order, Check Point Software, VeriSign, Netscape, McAfee, PointCast, Microsoft, Security Dynamics, JavaSoft, Dazel and Finjan. Four of the 10 -- Check Point, VeriSign, McAfee and Security Dynamics -- address some aspect of security control firewalls, authentication, virus protection. PointCast addresses the distribution and delivery of information with push technology. Dazel offers a way to manage data output. JavaSoft's mantra for the Java language -- write once, run anywhere -- promises to simplify the developer's life in a multiplatform world. And Microsoft and Netscape are vying to set Internet desktop and server standards through domination of those platforms.

These and other software vendors' efforts to control, protect, manage, simplify, even dominate, the Internet world, will all help bring order to chaos.

Related article: Internet 25 Methodology

To select and rank Software Magazine's Internet 25, we solicited the help of 10 experts from across the industry. Each panel member, or elector, was first asked to nominate up to five software vendors targeting the corporate enterprise that have made a significant contribution to the Internet space. Then the panel members were asked to grade each of the nominated vendors, on a scale of A to F, in 10 categories: vision, execution of vision, strength of management team, value proposition, financial stability, marketing effectiveness, technology/product innovation, strength of development team, quality of products and quality of service/support. Panel members were allowed to abstain from voting on companies and/or categories in which they felt they had insufficient knowledge, or which they felt were too early to judge. The cumulative scores in the categories were then used to calculate the overall grade point average (GPA) for each company.

Each company in the Internet 25 had a minimum of three votes per category, except in the quality of service/support. Because the service and support category did not receive the three-vote minimum for many companies, we did not calculate the scores from that category in the GPA.

Finally, we used the GPAs to rank the vendors. Companies that did not fit the description of an enterprise software provider were removed from the list by Software Magazine editors.