Microsoft Gets Ready To Launch Jupiter E-Biz Suite

The suite will incorporate the latest releases of Commerce Server, Content Management Server, BizTalk Server and Host Integration Server, along with pre-built applications, in an attempt to ease the design and construction of business Web sites, said a source close to Microsoft familiar with the plans.

"Jupiter is a packaging thing; they're trying to do a solution-in-a-box for commerce sites. They'll have model apps included and will target about 15 markets, including workflow [applications, Web sites and commerce sites. It's for companies who can't afford [to go to a consulting firm like KPMG to build these things," the source said.

Sources close to Microsoft expect the company to announce Jupiter this summer, perhaps at Fusion, scheduled for July 12--15. An initial version is expected to debut this year, to be followed by a fully integrated iteration in 2003.

Frederick Volking, senior architect of Hunter Stone, a solution provider in Columbia, S.C., said such a server bundle could sell well. "If they're packaging these things together and adding interconnection tools, that makes perfect sense. It would be a set of tools most e-commerce people would use," he said.

In some respects, the bundle will be a productized version of Microsoft Solution for Internet Business, a collection of software that Microsoft Consulting Services or solution providers use to construct Web and commerce sites for customers.

One solution provider said an integrated BackOffice-type suite could also indicate that Microsoft's vaunted "solution selling" effort is off track. "If this is off-the-shelf software, it says they did not succeed in solution selling because, at the end of the day, Microsoft believes the product is the solution. And trying to do a solutions sale is something a systems integrator, not an ISV, knows how to do," he said.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on unannounced products but said integration between various Microsoft offerings is always on the table.

Integrating various products has been in Microsoft's blood since it announced Microsoft Office in 1990. The company extended the suite concept into the tools arena with VisualStudio and into the server realm with BackOffice in subsequent years.