IPlanet

Last updated
iPlanet
IPlanetlogo-full whiteback.png
Owner Oracle Corporation
IntroducedJanuary 1996 (1996-01)
Markets E-commerce
Previous owners
Website www.iplanet.com

iPlanet was a product brand that was used jointly by Sun Microsystems and Netscape Communications Corporation when delivering software and services as part of a non-exclusive cross marketing deal that was also known as "A Sun|Netscape Alliance". [1]

Contents

History

After AOL merged with Netscape, technology analysts speculated that AOL's major interest was the netscape.com website (specifically the millions of registered users thereof [ citation needed ]), and to a lesser extent the Netscape Communicator suite, which some considered would be used to replace the Internet Explorer browser which AOL licensed from Microsoft and included as part of their software suite.

AOL entered into an agreement with systems and software company Sun Microsystems whereby engineers from both companies would work together on software development, marketing, sales, installation and support. Part of the deal was that Sun agreed to pay Netscape a fixed amount for each year of the deal regardless of whether any software was actually sold by the alliance.[ citation needed ] The code was written after the best parts of the Netscape Enterprise Server and the Sun Java System Web Server had been merged. [2]

The iPlanet brand was already owned by Sun following the acquisition of i-Planet, Inc. in October 1998 (i-Planet was founded just two years before in January 1996).

In 2001, the three year alliance came to an end, at which point, under the terms of the deal, both AOL and Sun retained equal rights to the code that had been jointly developed. [3] Toward the end of August 2001 many of the remaining Netscape employees were either laid off or transferred to Sun (mostly at its campuses in Santa Clara, California and Bangalore). During the period of the alliance, Netscape had hired very few people, most staff coming under the Sun umbrella.

AOL had continued to market the directory and certificate server products under the Netscape brand. But in 2004 AOL sold the directory and certificate server products to Red Hat, which open-sourced them and integrated both into its Red Hat Enterprise Server product portfolio (Red Hat Directory Server and Certificate System).

Most of the other iPlanet products were moved to the Sun ONE brand and then the Sun Java System brand.

After the Oracle acquisition of Sun, some of the former iPlanet products returned to be sold under the iPlanet brand, specifically Oracle iPlanet Web Server and Oracle iPlanet Web Proxy Server. [4]

Products

The suite of iPlanet offerings included:

The suite also included a number of server-side infrastructure components, including distributed event management and tools for managing large populations of iPlanet server instances.

Additionally, iPlanet sold "iPlanet E-Commerce Applications", a suite of software tools intended for building e-commerce websites:

Related Research Articles

Netscape Communications Corporation was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the so-called first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than 1 percent in 2006. Netscape created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over.

Sun Microsystems Defunct American computer hardware and software company

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the Network File System (NFS), VirtualBox, and SPARC microprocessors. Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them Unix, RISC processors, thin client computing, and virtualized computing. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California, on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.

In computing, a directory service or name service maps the names of network resources to their respective network addresses. It is a shared information infrastructure for locating, managing, administering and organizing everyday items and network resources, which can include volumes, folders, files, printers, users, groups, devices, telephone numbers and other objects. A directory service is a critical component of a network operating system. A directory server or name server is a server which provides such a service. Each resource on the network is considered an object by the directory server. Information about a particular resource is stored as a collection of attributes associated with that resource or object.

BEA Systems

BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008.

The 389 Directory Server is a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server developed by Red Hat as part of the community-supported Fedora Project. The name "389" derives from the port number used by LDAP.

Mozilla Application Suite Discontinued Internet suite

The Mozilla Application Suite is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It was based on the source code of Netscape Communicator. The development was spearheaded by the Mozilla Organization from 1998 to 2003, and by the Mozilla Foundation from 2003 to 2006.

GlassFish

GlassFish is an open-source Jakarta EE platform application server project started by Sun Microsystems, then sponsored by Oracle Corporation, and now living at the Eclipse Foundation and supported by Payara, Oracle and Red Hat. The supported version under Oracle was called Oracle GlassFish Server. GlassFish is free software and was initially dual-licensed under two free software licences: the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) and the GNU General Public License (GPL) with the Classpath exception. After having been transferred to Eclipse, GlassFish remained dual-licensed, but the CDDL license was replaced by the Eclipse Public License (EPL).

Sun Java System was a brand used by Sun Microsystems to market computer software. The Sun Java System brand superseded the Sun ONE brand in September 2003. There are two major suites under this brand, the Sun Java Enterprise System suite of infrastructure software, and the Sun Java Desktop System graphical user environment.

Oracle Communications Messaging Server is Oracle's messaging (email) server software. The software was obtained by Oracle as part of the company's acquisition of Sun in 2010.

Network Security Services

Network Security Services (NSS) is a collection of cryptographic computer libraries designed to support cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications with optional support for hardware TLS/SSL acceleration on the server side and hardware smart cards on the client side. NSS provides a complete open-source implementation of cryptographic libraries supporting Transport Layer Security (TLS) / Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and S/MIME. NSS releases prior to version 3.14 are tri-licensed under the Mozilla Public License 1.1, the GNU General Public License, and the GNU Lesser General Public License. Since release 3.14, NSS releases are licensed under GPL-compatible Mozilla Public License 2.0.

Oracle iPlanet Web Proxy Server

The Oracle iPlanet Web Proxy Server (OiWPS), formerly known as Sun Java System Web Proxy Server (SJSWPS), is a proxy server software developed by Sun Microsystems.

The Sun Java System Directory Server is a discontinued LDAP directory server and DSML server written in C and originally developed by Sun Microsystems. The Java System Directory Server is a component of the Java Enterprise System. Earlier iterations of Sun Java System Directory Server were known as Sun ONE Directory Server, iPlanet Directory Server, and, before that, Netscape Directory Server.

NetDynamics Application Server was an early Java-based integrated software platform. The product was developed by NetDynamics, a Silicon Valley start-up company founded in 1995 by Zack Rinat and Ofer Ben-Shachar. Unlike other early application server competitors, NetDynamics chose Java as the development language for the platform.

Netscape Application Server was an integrated software platform for developing and running transaction-oriented business applications on the web. It was developed originally by Kiva Software, which Netscape acquired in 1997.

The Sun Java System Calendar Server was Sun's calendar (scheduling) server. The currently available version is 6.3 which is now part of the Sun Java System Communications Suite.

The Netscape Server Application Programming Interface (NSAPI) is an application programming interface for extending server software, typically web server software.

Sun Java System Communications Suite is a collection of "Industrial-Strength" software services from Sun Microsystems. The supported platforms are: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris and Windows Server. Since Oracle acquired Sun in 2010, collection is now called Oracle Communications Unified Communications Suite.

Oracle iPlanet Web Server (OiWS) is a web server designed for medium and large business applications. Oracle iPlanet Web Server builds on the earlier Sun Java System Web Server, Sun ONE Web Server, iPlanet Web Server, and Netscape Enterprise Server products.

An Internet operating system, or Internet OS, is any type of operating system designed to run all of its applications and services through an Internet client, generally a web browser. The advantages of such an OS would be that it would run on a thin client, allowing cheaper, more easily manageable computer systems; it would require all applications to be designed on cross-platform, open standards; and would not tie a user's applications, documents, and preferences to a single computer, but rather place them in the Internet cloud. The Internet OS has also been promoted as the perfect type of platform for software as a service.

Kiva Software was the leading provider and pioneer of internet application server software. Kiva Software released the industry's first application server in January 1996, offering companies a robust platform on which to develop and deploy transaction-oriented business applications on the Web. Kiva's customers included Bank of America, E-Trade, Travelocity, Internet Shopping Network, Hong Kong Telecom and Pacific Bell Internet.

References

  1. "Sun-Netscape Alliance Announces New iPlanet(TM) Brand and Marketing Campaign" (Press release). July 21, 1999. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
  2. David and Michael Reilly (March 2002), JAVA Network Programming & Distributed Computing, Addison Wesley, p. 228
  3. Stephen Shankland (October 5, 2001). "Sun absorbing iPlanet staff, functions". CNET News.com. Archived from the original on January 2, 2013. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
  4. Web Tier Archived 2016-01-01 at the Wayback Machine . Oracle. Retrieved on 2013-09-08.