Sun Makes Revamped App Server Available

Sun ONE Application Server 7, Platform Edition, is available immediately, and both development and deployment on the app server is free, said Rick Schultz, group marketing manager for Sun ONE Java Web services.

Sun also is releasing Monday the standard edition of Sun ONE Application Server 7, which is priced at $2,000 per CPU. The enterprise edition, which will be priced at $10,000 per CPU, is due out in March.

The new app has been rearchitected and is built on the J2EE reference implementation from the Java Community Process (JCP), the committee of vendors that creates future Java specs, said Deborah Andrade, senior product marketing manager for Sun.

Sun has drawn considerable fire for the lack of performance and Java support in its app server over the past several years in comparison to leading app servers from BEA Systems and IBM, which is one of the reasons Sun has rebuilt its product.

Andrade said the new app server outperformed both BEA WebLogic and IBM WebSphere in SOAP message throughput in third-party benchmark testing. The product outperformed IBM in running JSPs and servlets in benchmark testing Sun conducted in-house, she said.

The platform edition contains the HTTP server from the Sun ONE Web service, a Web container for building Java Server Pages, and a built-in message queue for deploying Java Messaging Service, Schultz said.

The standard edition contains all of the platform edition's functionality and adds support for multitier deployment as well as remote administration and monitoring capabilities, he said.

Sun's intent with the platform edition is to win big market share in the low-end Java development space where an app server is used primarily to develop JSPs and Web applications, Schultz said.

"We want to be the volume leader on the low end where people are building and deploying JSPs and Web services," Schultz said.

Sun then hopes to use the free version to upsell to its for-fee app servers for larger enterprise deployments, he said.

John Rymer, research vice president for Giga, called Sun ONE Application Server 7 a "completely different product" than the remnants of the Netscape app server on which the original product was built.

Rymer said Sun is phasing out the life cycle of the earlier versions of iPlanet and Sun ONE app servers, which will be obsolete in a couple of years. "They're really trying to shift people over to the new base, which is 7," Rymer said.

Rymer said Sun ONE Application Server 7 is built simplistically so it can easily act as a component for a larger system, a strategy Sun Chairman, CEO and President Scott McNealy has previously stated for Sun's software.

"For a certain class of developers that is really building an architecture, not just building an application, whether it be their own frameworks, or data access or personalization or security in their architecture,this is going to be an appealing product," Rymer said. "Everything [Sun does going forward with their software stack I expect them to follow this model ... [to make these [software components very modular, simpler, easier to incorporate."

Rymer said Sun will be architecting all of its software to fit nicely into a product bundle that also will include its hardware systems, though the products still will be sold as stand-alones.