iPlanet e-commerce solutions anticipates embedding its Web and application server technologies with the Sun Microsystems. Solaris operating system and may seek similar deals with Hewlett-Packard . and IBM . regarding their Unix OSes as well, an iPlanet official said on Tuesday.
Such an arrangement with Solaris is inevitable, according to Patrick Dorsey, group marketing manager at iPlanet, in Palo Alto, Calif. He said he could not provide a date on when such a bundling arrangement might occur.
"I think the writing's on the wall that that type of integration is going to happen," Dorsey said.
"Companies buying Solaris are looking for an application server on top of Solaris," Dorsey said. "The trend is clear." iPlanet is a jointly owned venture of Sun and America Online.
"As iPlanet, we continue to be multiplatform, so we're looking for opportunities to do [similar bundlings] with IBM AIX and HP HP-UX as well," Dorsey said.
Such a bundling would save users from having to purchase the products separately and integrate them for applications such as e-commerce. Microsoft already bundles Web and application server products with its Windows operating platform, noted Dorsey and Joshua Walker, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
A developer license for iPlanet Application Server Enterprise Edition 6.0 already ships Solaris, as does a developer license of iPlanet's Web Server 4.1 Enterprise Edition, Dorsey said. The integration of the servers themselves represents a next step.
Customers will benefit from tighter integration and easier administration, management, and development tasks, Dorsey said.
"I think it's something the customers are demanding and the industry is moving toward," Dorsey said.