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App Servers Move To Operating System -- Sun, Microsoft Will Bundle Middleware With Solaris, Windows 2000

NOVEMBER, 1998

Sun Microsystems recently disclosed plans to bundle its NetDynamics application-server middleware with Solaris servers. Microsoft also revealed plans to bundle its Microsoft Transaction Server and Microsoft Message Queue Server with Windows NT Server. These are important milestones in an industrywide move to three-tier development. It also looks as if middleware is well on the way to becoming a standard part of the operating system.

Vendors such as Microsoft and Sun are realizing that if they want their respective operating platforms to continue to thrive in the enterprise environment, they must provide a technology platform that makes it easy for developers to build distributed applications. One way to execute on that strategy is to integrate middleware into the operating system. This potentially gives a developer the ability to write business logic that can more easily access transaction services, message queuing services, and Web services, not as silos of technology, but as something that is tightly integrated into the operating system.

Microsoft plans to integrate several distributed computing services in Windows 2000 (formerly NT 5): transactions, security, directory, and messaging. Sun's middleware bundle also includes a development environment. Sun plans to charge separately for the application server, but at a 20% discount. The price will be $3,500 per developer, and $13,500 for deployment.

"This is a big boost for Sun users," says Martin Marshall, an industry analyst at Zona Research Inc. "Sun needed to offer a transaction server." The capabilities of the NetDynamics fourth-generation language tool is also a boost, he says. It's a flexible tool for connecting to a variety of databases, including DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Sybase. This puts Sun in a stronger position than Microsoft, he adds.

Sun also says it will license Inprise's VisiBroker Integrated Transaction Service and integrate the object transaction monitor capabilities into its offerings. The NetDynamics product line will be expanded in future releases to provide NetDynamics object transaction monitor capabilities, Sun officials say.

Scalability Ranks Highest

Most business applications need access to multiple data sources. They also need a Web server so Web clients can access that functionality. Even more important is application and platform scalability. Given these requirements, a corporate developer will often need to write and quickly add functionality to an application that is capable of handling the stress of being hit suddenly by several thousand users.

Many developers see the application server as the necessary technology underpinning to making applications available to many people quickly. Application servers handle Web state and session management, load balancing, and connectivity to various application platforms.

As the number of concurrent users adds stress to a system, anything that aids in the scalability of that system is great, says David Reese, software developer at oil and gas company Chevron Corp. in San Ramon, Calif. Reese has built several applications using the NetDynamics Application Server, and he's looking forward to the time when the application server is integrated into the operating system and not just bundled with it. "The integration of Solaris and NetDynamics should make the configuration operation much easier for me, eliminating the need to install and manage disparate programs that demand specific expertise," he says.

Microsoft was the first to recognize the need to include application server features within the operating environment with the bundling of Microsoft Transaction Server with Windows NT. MTS was initially released as part of the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack. MTS is a Component Object Model-based transaction processor that provides integration with Microsoft Internet Information Server, transactional connectivity to Oracle databases, integration with Microsoft Message Queue Server, and transactional mainframe connectivity through Microsoft SNA Server.

"Our entire strategy is to make it easy for developers to build distributed applications," says Vic Gusdodra, director of platform marketing at Microsoft. "MTS technology allows developers to focus on developing business logic and value-added programming instead of writing code for the application infrastructure." Delivering this connectivity infrastructure will significantly reduce the time and cost of building new applications and integrating existing systems, he says. These types of services are mandatory for anybody who's trying to build distributed applications today, Gusdodra says.

Microsoft has committed to making sure that its customers have application interoperability at the transaction level. MTS supports transaction coordination with several other systems, including IBM's CICS. It also has a distributed transaction coordinator that third-party providers and corporate developers can plug in to.

How easy is it to take advantage of the distributed transaction services manifested in MTS? A few years ago, transactions and queuing were the domain of a very small, select group of skilled developers. Today, Visual Basic programmers can build basic applications that have transactional support, Gusdodra says. "A few years ago, if someone promised easy-to-use tools that integrate with complex technologies like transaction and queuing, I probably wouldn't have believed it," he says.

Portals For The Enterprise

Alan Baratz, president of Sun's Java software division, says application servers are also key to companies' creating what he's identified as "enterprise portals" on their internal networks and even "industry portals" that link a browser to a collection of enterprises. A portal is a conduit between a user and a vast sea of information on the Internet, says Baratz.

"The application server is the core technology enabling the development of Internet portals," says Baratz. The application server provides that linkage from the browser and the Web on the front end to the enterprise resources on the back end. "NetDynamics is the best product in the market at providing this portal capability and providing this core linkage," says a not-unbiased Baratz.

Sun is counting on the NetDynamics technology to deliver a middle-tier application layer capable of tying together disparate operating systems, databases, business applications, embedded devices, desktop computers, and mainframes. The company has also indicated that the NetDynamics application services would be integrated into all future versions of Solaris.

Sun also reaffirmed its commitment to NetDynamics on the Windows NT platform, and other operating systems as well. Sun's goal is to deliver a cross-platform capability, say Sun officials. But NetDynamics' installed base of users is somewhat concerned over how committed Sun is to supporting non-Solaris platforms. They also wonder if NetDynamics' priorities are shifting.