The Sun-Netscape Alliance is about to celebrate its first birthday by cleaning up an embarrassing public failure with a major customer - Bell Atlantic.
The Alliance, now called iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions, has been targeting its server software and electronic commerce applications at large Web sites and e-businesses, emphasizing the software's ability to handle lots of traffic and transactions.
But for weeks, iPlanet's ECXpert software, which Bell Atlantic is using for the exchange of documents and messages among trading partners and competitors, reportedly has been dropping orders submitted to Bell Atlantic by local competitors who have lured away the telephone company's residential customers (see sidebar).
While ECXpert wasn't entirely to blame for the carrier's problems, Bell Atlantic specified that the software failed to generate notices of orders received and suffered performance problems as activity increased. A Bell Atlantic official even hinted last week that the telco's IT department was close to scrapping the iPlanet software, at least temporarily.
IPlanet executives declined to comment on the Bell Atlantic situation, but the software maker's experience with the carrier underscores the opportunities and obstacles facing iPlanet in the fast-growing market for e-commerce products.
The company, which formed shortly after America Online bought Netscape early last year as part of a complex three-way deal involving Sun Microsystems, is considered by many to be a solid contender in the e-commerce software market. At the same time, the company is still struggling to carve out an identity.
Despite a deceptively simple product roadmap laid out last spring, iPlanet has confused some customers. The plan called for maintaining interim releases of existing Sun and Netscape products; making fast decisions about which products to keep and dump; getting their respective products to work smoothly with each other; and, finally, releasing new versions under the iPlanet brand.
For the most part, iPlanet has shipped its software on time. But one customer mentioned major problems with the Web server released last fall. That product trails in the market far behind Microsoft's Web server and the free Apache Web server.
Other customers were spooked at the uncertain future of iPlanet and held off buying the well-regarded Netscape Application Server. They're waiting for what's now called iPlanet Application Server 6.0, due in March. This version will include the latest Java APIs - packaged in Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) - which are a critical requirement for most big e-commerce sites. J2EE is already being deployed in application servers from the likes of BEA Systems and IBM.
"Version 6.0 is a strong product," says Anne Thomas, an analyst with Patricia Seybold Group, a Boston research company. "Customers are asking for J2EE. [Version 6.0] is a high-end application server offering with better than average performance and scalability."
IPlanet President and General Manager Mark Tolliver admits his company stumbled out of the gate, failing to describe a clear path for a bundle of competing products. Sun and Netscape, for example, each had their own application server and at first talked vaguely of blending the two.
"We did struggle with that for three or four months," Tolliver says. "That's what convinced us we had to be crystal clear, or people just wouldn't take us seriously."
The final choice: the Netscape Application Server, renamed iPlanet Application Server, instead of Sun's Netdynamics.
But the product decisions left some customers, such as Johnson & Johnson senior consultant Bob Rudis, smarting. Products he relied on were cancelled or sold off, while new releases of others were buggy, he claims.
"I am a victim of the alliance," Rudis says. He ran into problems with the 4.0 release last fall of the iPlanet Web server, based on Netscape code. "It did not install properly," he says. "It did not interoperate with its own directory server. And we do not see major industry support for it going forward.
"Due to how poorly the Netscape integration has been, and also due to how sparse communication has been from Sun and iPlanet, we are considering all alternatives," he says.
Brian Clark, vice president of information technology for BrannWorldwide, a direct marketing company in Deerfield, Ill., says he was unable even to get price quotes from a Netscape reseller. "They had problems getting in contact with anyone at iPlanet who could give them good information," he says.
Tolliver insists the confusion is a thing of the past. "The No. 1 accomplishment has been answering the question: 'Can you stand up and present a crystal clear product roadmap to your customers?' Everything else flows from that."
The stakes are huge, with billions of dollars being spent on the type of e-commerce software that iPlanet sells. The company offers server products, such as directory and application servers, that form the skeleton of e-commerce sites. And those skeletons are fleshed out with applications for billing, procurement and trading partner exchanges - applications that are available from iPlanet.
IPlanet has formidable resources, including 2,400 employees, drawn equally from Sun and Netscape. The company claims to have 300 of the Fortune 500 companies as customers, and has gained momentum of late with some big wins.
Washington Mutual in Seattle, for instance, is shelling out $8 million for iPlanet software and services, to be used for both a corporate intranet and as the basis of future e-commerce plans. Firmbuy, a venture-funded start-up in Chicago, just launched an online business procurement service based on iPlanet software.
Observers say iPlanet, given its wide range of products, has a chance to become one of a handful of really big e-commerce systems suppliers, particularly if its new application server catches on. But they add that the company will need to strengthen both its marketing and technologies.
When it comes to e-commerce, customers are likely to be very unforgiving if the technologies don't work as promised.
RELATED LINKS
Contact Senior Editor John Cox
ECXpert overview from iPlanetMore iPlanet coverage from Network World
