SANTA CLARA, Calif. Jan. 22, 2001 Forrester Research recently gave iPlanet's Application Server the nod, naming it as No. 1 among 11 leading app servers.
Application servers are the central-computing engines that host e-business software systems. The iPlanet application server outscored other suppliers in the areas of integration and supplier momentum.
According to Forrester: "iPlanet & knows how to architect a product for top performance, scalability and reliability. The supplier also offers other e-business infrastructure ... and it embeds industrial strength middleware."
Sanjay Sarathy, director of product marketing for iPlanet, said his company has focused on providing a complete platform on top of which companies can build their e-commerce solutions. The key issue for iPlanet's customers is creating an integrated e-commerce system, Sanjay said.
"Our belief is that companies have only touched the surface of understanding what it means to do e-commerce over the Internet," Sanjay said. "e-Commerce over the Internet isn't necessarily a series of disparate pieces that are just floating out there. It's really about how you build an integrated system and how you blend aspects around buying, selling and billing altogether. Our thrust is not only providing the higher-level e-commerce applications, but also providing the underlying infrastructure to support it. We see integration as the big trend, and we see the application server as the underlying foundation for that trend."
iPlanet is an alliance between Sun Microsystems and Netscape, which is owned by America Online.
Forrester's e-business TechRankings are updated monthly to reflect changing trends and advancements in the technology industry. They are intended to provide detailed, objective research to help companies select and implement the best technology for their e-business initiatives.
