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Sun Microsystems seemingly acquires application servers the way that my son acquires Pokemon cards: as often as possible, with little regard as to how many Pokemon cards are already sitting in his acquisition pile. Call it the Pokemon Principle.
Sun Microsystems seemingly acquires application servers the way that my son acquires Pokemon cards: as often as possible, with little regard as to how many Pokemon cards are already sitting in his acquisition pile. Call it the Pokemon Principle.
The Pokemon Principle seems to be the only explanation behind Sun’s application-server strategy, which must be evaluated — in addition to the product’s technical capabilities — when looking at NetDynamics 5.0, one of the leading application servers on the market. Sun’s relative promiscuity in acquiring and positioning application servers started when NetDynamics itself was acquired by Sun and was followed up this year with the acquisition of the Netscape (nee Kiva) Application Server through its alliance with America Online. And it’s a cause for concern, as Sun has declared that the Netscape and NetDynamics application servers will be combined into an integrated product sometime in the year 2000.
Does this strike you as being a relatively optimistic goal? We’re not talking about combining two types of coffee beans here — we’re talking about combining two sophisticated application servers with a total of four owners (Kiva, Sun, Netscape, and the original NetDynamics) over the last three years
In the meantime, you need to map an application-server strategy, and NetDynamics 5.0 is part of that mix. Still, even with the uncertainty surrounding NetDynamics’ future and its position in the marketplace, you’ll want to give it a close look and decide whether it’s the right product for you.
Most corporations won’t need the power of NetDynamics. In an exemplary show of honesty, Sun itself admits that the power of NetDynamics is best used for portal computing, which applies only to the top echelon of computing sites. But these sites will be treated to a great product, especially on the development side with the Studio IDE.
