iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 Platform Sets New Pace for Web Server Performance - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Oct 4, 1999

The Sun-Netscape Alliance Tuesday announced the immediate availability of the iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 platform, which continues to deliver market-leading performance, reliability, manageability and security features.

Formerly known as Netscape Enterprise Server, the new offering is the optimal foundation for a successful Web strategy, meeting the escalating needs of enterprises and service providers competing in the Net Economy. iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 platform has the fastest Java Technology-Based Application performance in its class, accelerates delivery of dynamic Web content and helps ensure that customers can plug in best-of-breed applications to extend and enhance their Web server platform.

Web server software is the first and last point of contact for customers, suppliers and employees requesting Web-based services and information and for conducting transactions. iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 software helps lower Web server total cost of ownership and delivers a higher return on investment by allowing companies to concentrate on providing new Web-based services, rather than focusing on Web server uptime and reliability.

"We understand the rapidly changing requirements of companies competing in the Net Economy and are delivering market-leading software to allow companies to reliably conduct global Web-based business, 24-hours a day," said Dr. Stuart Wells, senior vice president, Application Infrastructure Products, Sun-Netscape Alliance.

"Enterprises and service providers have demanding Web server needs and are often faced with huge spikes in demand. They need the fastest performing Web server software available with support for the latest Java and Internet technologies -- iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 delivers all of this and more."

Requirements for Competing in the Net Economy

While the needs of organizations vary, decision-makers use the same set of criteria to evaluate Web server software. These criteria include: performance and scalability, reliability and availability, manageability and security, and a comprehensive application development environment.

The market-leading iPlanet Web Server platform provides the optimal foundation for a successful Web strategy. The new iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 delivers:

* Performance and Scalability - the industry's only high-speed engine that supports a multi-threaded and multi-process environment, and a new integrated servlet engine, support for Java Servlet 2.1 extensions, and in-process, pluggable native JavaVMs. Based on tests conducted by Mindcraft, the new features deliver enormous performance gains resulting in a 222 percent Java Servlet performance advantage over a commercial version of the Apache Web Server, Stronghold version 2.4.2, and a 22 percent advantage over CGI scripts.

* Reliability and Availability - the ability to handle exponential growth in traffic while maintaining 24x7 availability to further reduce system down time. The iPlanet Web Server platform continues to provide availability leadership through its multi-process mode and process monitor support to enable the server to continue serving pages, even if a process goes down.

* Manageability and Security - the new graphical user interface streamlines administration. Tight integration with iPlanet Directory Server 4.1 lets managers divide and delegate Web server roles and tasks to the appropriate administrator, based on skills. With encrypted HTML-based administration, utilizing LDAP and digital certificates, administration tasks can be performed either locally or remotely. Added support for PKCS No. 11, the standard interface for cryptographic hardware accelerators, boosts secure transaction performance for e-commerce sites.

* Web Application Development Platform - market leadership helps ensure that customers can enhance their Web server performance with best-of-breed applications optimized for the iPlanet Web Server platform. iPlanet Web Server is standardizing on the Java application platform and supports components of Java 2 Enterprise Edition, such as Java servlets and Java server pages, to provide an optimized environment for Web application development and a greater return on Web application investments. iPlanet Web Server continues to support the popular NSAPI and server side JavaScript, including support for JavaScript 1.4 engine.

iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 supports open standards including HTTP 1.1, SSL 3.0, LDAP v3.0 and SNMP. It runs on the following operating system platforms: Intel Windows NT Workstation and Server 4.0 environments, Hewlett Packard HP-UX 11.0, IBM AIX, Tru 64 Unix, SGI and IRIX.

Pricing and Availability

The iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 platform is available for immediate download for the Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 operating environment and the HP-UX 11 and Windows NT operating systems. Versions for the IBM AIX, Tru 64 Unix, SGI and IRIX operating systems are expected next month.