Mountain View, Calif. - First Netscape brought Web information to the outside world with its groundbreaking Navigator browser. Now the company is rolling out two new applications intended to do almost the same thing for data contained in PeopleSoft enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.
The new software is designed to take the mounds of information available within PeopleSoft's databases and applications and expose it for use by other applications.
One application is Netscape PerLDAP for PeopleSoft, a Perl-based version of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. PerLDAP lets companies access corporate user data stored in PeopleSoft systems in order to manage user accounts throughout the enterprise.
The other new offering is Netscape Application Server for PeopleSoft, which works with Netscape Directory Server to expose modules, such as procurement, sales and ordering, to outside customers. That way, the browser can allow a customer to authenticate against the directory server and pay bills directly through a company's PeopleSoft system.
Companies willing to let customers access internal data can create user profiles for those customers that in turn can be used for targeted Web advertising. For example, a bank might want to display an ad for financial services to a customer who has an online bank account but not an online trading account.
"Netscape really had to [come out with such tools] because the convergence of ERP and the Internet is starting to explode," says Eric Bragg, vice president of sales and marketing at Advis, a consulting firm that integrates ERP programs with other technology. Products such as Netscape's new offerings can help drive down the cost of adding end users to ERP systems, which can cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000, he says.
Netscape PerLDAP for PeopleSoft can be downloaded for free at www.mozilla.org, one of Netscape's Web sites. Netscape Application Server for PeopleSoft will ship in the first half of 1999, and will run on Windows NT and Solaris platforms. It will cost $70,000 per CPU.
In September, Netscape announced similar products supporting SAP R/3 applications.
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