Kiva Software

Last updated

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. [1] [2]

Contents

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Kiva Software was a privately held company (1994 - 1997) backed by venture capitalists, including Wiess, Peck & Greer, Greylock, Discovery Ventures, Sippl MacDonald Ventures, Norwest Venture Capital, and Trinity Ventures. [3]

History

Kiva Software was founded in May 1994 by Keng Lim, its chairman and CEO, who saw the opportunity to leverage the internet as a platform for running business applications. In January 1996, Kiva Enterprise Server was launched. It was the first Java application server to market, and it also supported application development in C++.

By mid-1997, the company had shipped two major releases of Kiva Enterprise Server; grown to over 100 employees at five field offices; raised US$13.9 million in capital investment over two rounds of funding; [4] and, according to Lim in a Red Herring interview, was expecting to go public by the middle of 1998, barring an acquisition. [5]

In December 1997, Kiva Software was acquired by Netscape Communications as an "important strategic technology for linking people and businesses together through Intranets, Extranets and the Internet." [6] Netscape issued 6.3 million shares of Netscape stock to purchase 100 percent of Kiva stock and options, a deal valued at US$180 million. [7] Kiva Enterprise Server was folded into Netscape's suite of server products and became Netscape Application Server.

In 1999, America Online (AOL) acquired Netscape in a stock swap valued at US$10 billion, [8] and formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems. As part of the three-way deal, Sun Microsystems licensed Netscape's server software for $350 million over three years. [9] The Sun-Netscape alliance rolled out a new brand name, iPlanet, which was used for all the server products. The Netscape Application Server was chosen as the code base for the iPlanet Application Server, [10] [11] even though there had been talk that the iPlanet Application Server would be a combination of both Netscape Application Server and NetDynamics Application Server. [12] NetDynamics, a former competitor of Kiva Software, had been acquired by Sun in 1998, prior to the Sun-Netscape alliance.

In 2002, when the three-year alliance between AOL/Netscape and Sun ended, per the agreement, Sun took sole control of the iPlanet software. iPlanet was absorbed into Sun, and iPlanet Application Server was rebranded as Sun ONE Application Server, and, later, the Sun Java System Application Server. [13]

Products

Kiva Software's products included Kiva Enterprise Server, the platform on which web applications were deployed and managed; Kiva Application Builder, the graphical development tool for building applications; and the Kiva SDK (available in both Java and C++), which packaged foundation classes and methods.

Awards and recognition

In 1997, Kiva Software was selected as one of the industry's top privately held technology companies by Red Herring, Computerworld, and Data Communications magazine. That same year, Kiva Enterprise Server won PC Week's Best of Comdex award for "Best Internet Software" at Comdex. [14]

As Kiva Enterprise Server evolved into Netscape Application server and then into iPlanet Application Server, the product continued to lead technologically (although not in market share) in the increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace of application servers. In 2000, Netscape Application 4.0 achieved the highest rating in a head-to-head comparison of application servers by independent researcher D.H. Brown Associates. [15] In 2001, Standard & Poors (S&P) concluded that iPlanet Application Server was the best choice for running its web services business after conducting two rounds of evaluations. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netscape Navigator</span> Web browser by Netscape released in 1994

Netscape Navigator is a discontinued proprietary web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in the 1990s, but by around 2003 its user base had all but disappeared. This was partly because the Netscape Corporation did not sustain Netscape Navigator's technical innovation in the late 1990s.

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 one percent in 2006. An early Netscape employee, Brendan Eich, created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. A founding engineer of Netscape, Lou Montulli, created HTTP cookies. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sun Microsystems</span> American computer company, 1982–2010

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), 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. Notable Sun acquisitions include Cray Business Systems Division, Storagetek, and Innotek GmbH, creators of VirtualBox. 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.

iPlanet

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".

Spyglass, Inc. was an Internet software company. It was founded in 1990, in Champaign, Illinois, as an offshoot of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and later moved to Naperville, Illinois. Spyglass was created to commercialize and support technologies from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It focused on data visualization tools, such as graphing packages and 3D rendering engines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Application Suite</span> 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GlassFish</span> Application server project

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 OmniFish, Fujitsu and Payara. 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network Security Services</span> Collection of cryptographic computer libraries

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oracle iPlanet Web Proxy Server</span>

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

Tarantella was a line of products developed by a branch of the company Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) since 1993. In 2001, SCO was renamed Tarantella, Inc. as it retained only the division that produced Tarantella. On July 13, 2005, Tarantella, Inc. was purchased by Sun Microsystems for US$25M. Tarantella exists now as a division of Oracle Corporation.

"Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used open standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors.

Oracle iPlanet Web Server (OiWS) is a web server designed for medium and large business applications. Previous versions were marketed as Netscape Enterprise Server, iPlanet Web Server, Sun ONE Web Server, and Sun Java System Web Server.

Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

References

  1. ↑ Just what did Netscape get for $180 million? Archived 2014-02-22 at the Wayback Machine , Network World, Dec 22, 1997
  2. ↑ Netscape Absorbs Server-App Darling Kiva, Wired, Nov 27, 1997
  3. ↑ KIVA Software Closes $9 Million in Venture Funding, PR Newswire, Jul 08, 1997
  4. ↑ KIVA Software Closes $9 Million in Venture Funding, PR Newswire, Jul 08, 1997
  5. ↑ On the Move: Kiva Software is helping the Web become more dynamic than ever, The Red Herring, Jul 14, 1997
  6. ↑ Netscape to Acquire Kiva Software, PR Newswire, Nov 24, 1997
  7. ↑ Netscape in $180 Million Deal for a Software Maker, The New York Times, Nov 25, 1997
  8. ↑ AOL completes $10 billion acquisition of Netscape, Associated Press, Mar 18, 1999
  9. ↑ Netscape Communications Corp - Acquisition By AOL And Sun Archived 2014-03-03 at the Wayback Machine , Free Encyclopedia of Ecommerce
  10. ↑ Dooley, Douglas (July 25, 2006). "Time to take out WebLogic". JavaWorld . Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  11. ↑ Sliwa, Carol (April 3, 2000). "NetDynamics users cry foul". Computerworld . Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  12. ↑ Sun-Netscape duo announces new application server software, CNET, Dec 6, 1999
  13. ↑ IAS6 (iPlanet Application Server, version 6) Archived 2014-02-21 at the Wayback Machine , Planet Larg, Nov 05, 2009
  14. ↑ Comdex rewards art of innovation, Las Vegas Sun, Nov 20, 1997
  15. ↑ iPlanet Achieves Top Score in Head-to-Head Technical Review of Leading Application Servers, Time Warner press release, Apr 05, 2000
  16. ↑ S&P puts iPlanet Application Server to the test, Mar 15, 2002
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.