New Portal for the Sun/Netscape AllianceWednesday July 21st, 1999Sun and Netscape have named their new alliance - iPlanet - and have a new portal site (based on the my.netscape portal). Thanks to Peter Fabian for the news. Not sure about the name (sounds like a hangout for iBooks and iMacs), but it's a cool concept. I don't know that I'll ever use server software, but if I do I suppose I'll probably look at the Netscape/Sun thing first. Hey, I happen to like iMacs and iBooks. They're cute. A whole planet of them would be great. Now what's on this iPlanet thing? It was taking forever to download. the i* moniker is no worse than the e-* moniker (e-Zine, e-Business, e-Comerse, e-Trading, e-Crapola ...) that was (and still is) floating around, or the tendancy to stick a "x" in front of all things Linux. And its much better than the "web" and "cyber" monikers. (William Gibson even apologized for inventing the word "cyber") At least there not numbering it with a 2000 or calling it the Millenium portal ... These monikers a pretty much a Marketing "make-work" project... I saw on slashdot an article about why they are going to the i* moniker, it's here at : http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?990720.iisunnet.htm As it is what makes me angry is the reason given by a Mr. Tarter some 5 paragraphs into the report. Take a look. toufic.@hushmail.com I'm not sure what the hell the entire article is about any-ways. I don't think the author realy did any fact checking... contrary to his "the Netscape Name will die" opinion, Netscape seems to be plastered all over the portal. This looks to me like an attempt to Brand the Netcenter concept, for sale to other portals. By making it iPlanet, and stating its powered by Netscape's Netcenter, it definately sounds like a perchasable technology to me. As a Netscape customer and user for many years, I find this an incredibly dumb and shortsighted idea on the part of Sun/AOL. The Netscape brand has tremendous value, presence and goodwill associated with it in the user/customer community. To me, this really looks like professional jealousy on the part of a bunch of folks at Sun. They don't like the fact that Netscape products are more popular (and just plain work better) in the marketplace than Sun products. They don't like the fact that Netscape products are largely replacing Sun products. I guess the top brass at Sun and AOL decided they needed to make some concession to the whiners, and that was to drop the Netscape name. Pretty pathetic! Mike Crist they're not dropping the Netscape name. There's that Netscape logo on the upper-left side of iplanet.com. This is a specialized portal and I'd rather see Sun+Netscape instead of AOL+Netscape. Anyway this won't replace netcenter or my netscape Netscape did burn a lot of developers. :/ Also, I think the name Netscape is too tied into the Web browser for anyone to take seriously as server software. I mean Composer's okay but it doesn't do frames and it's just not a great example, and Navigator and just about all of Netscape's products turn over at an insane rate, and even if the server software doesn't do the same it might, again, not be taken seriously. Best to scratch the image (but NOT for the browser) for the server side and have a name that can be associated with a professional product and a stable one from day 1. Am I out of it or something? How particularly did Netscape burn developers? Sure, jwz seemed to be burned by it - but he's just burnt out and pissed off at the whole Netscape corporation. Did they burn Web developers? This I can understand, with the <LAYER> tag and non-compliance with major standards. Even so, we can look forward to not having to worry about this any more. I'm honestly confused.. "with the LAYER tag"?! Puh-lease! The LAYER tag was deprecated even before the final 4.0 was released! Nobody ever used it, and nobody ever should have used it. CSS based DHTML works just fine, and it's possible to do cross platform DHTML without too much of an effort (I know as I've developed a xp DHTML library) No, but those of us who paid $90 and above to be in the DevEdge program got HOSED when AOL took over. It was like $300 to get into the upper levels, wow I'd be hateful if I paid that much. You were supposed to get Developer CDs and stuff, but after February, nada. Apology: I forgot my MozillaZine password, so am posting anonymously. Obligatory disclaimer: I don't speak officially for AOL, Sun, or the Sun-Netscape Alliance; however I do work in the Alliance and have been helping to sell Netscape products for over four years now. First, to clarify and summarize the new naming scheme: "iPlanet" is the new brand name for the product line of server and e-commerce software, "Sun-Netscape Alliance" is the name for the organization developing, supporting, and selling them. "iPlanet" will the product brand name and logo on the product boxes and ads, but "Sun-Netscape Alliance" will be the name (and logo) on our business cards, and that's how we will be answering our phones. "Netscape" as a brand name will still be in heavy use not only for Communicator/Navigator but also for a number of other products and services from AOL, including Netcenter-related services. Second, my personal opinion is that it is better to have a new brand name specifically for the server and e-commerce software. The name "Netscape" was and is so heavily identified with the browser client software that it has been difficult to get people to look past the browser and realize that Netscape (the company) had any other products. A sample conversation with a prospective customer, exaggerated but not by much: "Hi, we're here to talk about how you can use our Netscape BuyerXpert software to streamline your internal procurement processes." "Oh, we already use Netscape in this office!") I for one am glad that we created a new brand, and reserved the "Netscape" brand for use with products and services more tied to the client and the web. Frank Hecker hecker@netscape.com This is Stupid!!! all 3 of those company's have theyr own server software. AOL NEtscape and Sun, and by the way, AOL's is open source now, its called the +gasp+ AOL Server. i forgot the url though, whole AOL and AOL site run on AOL Server, it looks cool, it has its own type of server side scripting and stuff, hey you know if they can make all of AOL run on it and be down very very minimally I think its ok,the website claims this and that about sepeed, but sure everything is fast when you have 500 top-of-the-line servers running it, but its IS 18 Million users, so who knows... Kaoslord writes: "This is Stupid!!! all 3 of those company's have theyr own server software. AOL NEtscape and Sun, ..." To clarify what is going on here: 1. The distinction between Netscape and Sun web servers will be temporary. Sometime in the future the separate Netscape and Sun web servers are going to be replaced by a single iPlanet web server product. (Or a single iPlanet web server product line -- there may be both high-end and low-end versions of the iPlanet web server, just like today the Netscape FastTrack Server is a low-end version of the Netscape Enterprise Server.). We're not going to sell AOLserver at all. 1. You're using the word "server" as if it meant "web server" only. The Sun-Netscape Alliance actually sells a lot more than just web servers, and in fact web servers (as opposed to other types of servers) account for only a small fraction of the Alliance's revenue. (That's why, for example, the popularity of the Apache web server doesn't really affect Alliance business.) Frank Hecker, hecker@netscape.com |