Whether your company is large or small, you are probably exploring Big Data solutions and using cloud services and will need to integrate with other enterprise workloads.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Gwyn Clay, CEO of Stonebranch, will share detailed information about how their customers are already integrating Workload Automation with tools like Hadoop, and running workloads completely in the cloud using a modern enterprise-wide workload automation solution that is 100...| By Mike Barlotta | Article Rating: |
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| February 1, 2000 12:00 AM EST | Reads: |
8,736 |
The application server market continues to be one of the hottest areas in technology. Why? Because an application server is the central piece of software in a Web-based architecture. An application server centralizes application logic and data access, making it possible to access applications over the Internet or an intranet (see my article in the May '99 PBDJ [Vol. 6, issue 5]). Finding a standard definition for the term application server is difficult, but it can probably best be described as the software that provides an execution engine for server-side logic and provides a means for client applications to access data in a distributed application architecture.
Most companies have already started several Web-based applications and are evaluating different Web-based development tools. These companies have probably completed their prototypes and initial applications using different solutions and are now in a position where they must start committing to an application server platform to build their enterprise application architecture. Companies are finding this decision somewhat difficult due to the crowded marketplace and their varying degrees of success with different tools. The marketplace has not produced a consensus on which products make up the leading application servers. It'll probably take another year or so before it becomes clearer which companies will emerge as the leaders of the application server market.
In the article I mentioned earlier I stated that the database vendors (Sybase and Oracle) along with IBM, Sun and Microsoft would likely remain on top as vendors in the application marketplace. I still see that as holding true, although the technology these vendors offer may not be home-grown. IBM, Sybase, Oracle and Microsoft have all built their own application servers while Sun and BEA Systems, another leading software vendor, have acquired companies in order to compete in the application server market. BEA Systems entered the application server market by acquiring WebLogic. Sun has led the way in application server acquisitions. They bought NetDynamics and Forté while also forming an alliance with AOL to use Netscape software, particularly the Netscape Application Server, which is based on technology acquired when Netscape purchased Kiva Software Corp. The Sun-AOL alliance has branded the new application server - a result of the combination of these two technologies - iPlanet. However, the iPlanet Application Server won't be available until later this year and it hasn't been determined how solutions built by customers using NetDynamics, Netscape Application Server or Forté will be affected.
Part of the problem in choosing an application server comes from the numerous vendor acquisitions or alliances that are occurring. As larger companies buy up smaller application server vendors, the future of their application server technology comes into question. One of the issues that can impact application server technology after it has been purchased is how the technology will be integrated with the existing technology of the buying company. Another is whether or not solutions built on prior releases of technology from either company will be supported in later releases of the product. Finally, the application server that you choose to base your applications on today may not exist in the future, if a larger company buys and phases out the product line.
Another problem is determining a vendor's particular vision or strategy. Is the vendor dedicated to open computing and standards and will their application server continue to support the latest standards in Java, CORBA and XML? How will these be supported? Oracle has left many managers and developers trying to figure out what their product strategy is since they've provided similar functionality in both the Oracle Application Server and the newer Oracle8i database. Microsoft hasn't shown any major enhancements in MTS since version 2 nor have they shown any willingness to adopt industry standards such as CORBA, EJB or XML in their application server.
Although application servers focus on different areas or niches, all application servers must meet basic requirements such as scalability, reliability, security and manageability. They must also support various network protocols and languages. Most application servers rely on HTTP, CORBA/IIOP or both for client access, and support Java, C/C++ or both for development languages. Others have proprietary tag languages like Allaire's ColdFusion and Pervasive Software's Tango. The protocols and languages can have a major impact on a company's application server choice, since it will likely want to choose tool sets and languages their developers are already familiar with. In addition, the developer environment and ease at which applications can be built is very important. Enhanced development tools as well as CORBA ORB, transaction and J2EE/EJB support are all major areas that are being heavily invested in now, as are XML and connectivity to ERP solutions such as SAP and Peoplesoft. The race to integrate these technologies into application server products will continue to pace the application server race in 2000. For example, BEA Systems has tried to strengthen their WebLogic offering by buying Symantec's development tools, including VisualCafé. Other major acquisitions include SilverStream Software, Inc.'s, buying GemLogic for their XML Integration Server (XMLIS) and ObjectEra for its JBroker Java ORB technology, which it already incorporated into its SilverStream Application Server.
Sybase's EAServer (Jaguar CTS/PowerDynamo) continues to show strongly in the application server market with release 3.5. Sybase is committed to open solutions as evidenced by the numerous platforms, languages and protocols that EAServer supports. Sybase has continued to support industry standards by adding EJB support in the lastest release. For additional features new to release 3.5, see my article in the December '99 PBDJ (Vol. 6, issue 12). EAServer has strong development tools in PowerBuilder and PowerJ and has demonstrated scalability and performance in large Web-based applications.
According to a recent review, the new release of EAServer really pushes them to the top of the application server market. Many companies evaluating application servers have been skittish about Sybase due to their poor financial showing in recent years; however, the company has made a dramatic turn-around, regaining profitability and beating Wall Street earnings estimates, while remaining dedicated to building leading-edge open tools.
I encourage everyone interested in learning about different application server technologies to visit the Application Server Zone at www.appserver-zone.com and compare the EAServer offering to other application server technologies.
Published February 1, 2000 Reads 8,736
Copyright © 2000 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
More Stories By Mike Barlotta
Background Information: Michael Barlotta is the Director of Technology at AEGIS.net Inc (www.AEGIS.net). Mike is a Sun Certified Java Programmer and is recognized as an expert on the Sybase application server EAServer (Jaguar CTS), mentoring clients and speaking at conferences on the topic. He is the author of several books including Taming Jaguar and Jaguar Development with PowerBuilder 7 (both by Manning Publications). Be sure to check out Mike’s Web site www.TamingJaguar.com.
Whether your company is large or small, you are probably exploring Big Data solutions and using cloud services and will need to integrate with other enterprise workloads.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Gwyn Clay, CEO of Stonebranch, will share detailed information about how their customers are already integrating Workload Automation with tools like Hadoop, and running workloads completely in the cloud using a modern enterprise-wide workload automation solution that is 100...May. 21, 2012 10:24 AM EDT |
By Jeremy Geelan What do the CTOs of the CIA and the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office have in common with the CEOs of Eucalyptus, GoGrid, ActiveState, Appcara, OpSource and Nortonworks, the CTOs of Rackspace, SoftLayer, SOA Software and AppZero, the Founder & General Manager of Dell Boomi, the VP of Big Data & Streams at IBM and the Chief Strategy Officer at Pacific Controls? Answer: all are shortly to present breakout sessions as members of the distinguished Speaker Facul...May. 21, 2012 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,971 |
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Rackspace Hosting is the service leader in cloud computing, and a founder of OpenStack, an open source cloud operating system. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers and partners, across a portfolio of IT services, including Manage...May. 21, 2012 09:49 AM EDT Reads: 207 |
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End-to-end tests need to pass through multiple dependent systems, which are commonly unavailable, evolving, or difficult-to-access for testing.
Accessing such systems often involves transaction and bandwidth fees.
Teams need to test and tune the system under test against a realistic and broad range of performance and ...May. 21, 2012 09:45 AM EDT Reads: 1,271 |
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Which do you think is the most important cloud computing standard still to tackle?
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What do the CTOs of the CIA and the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office have in common with the CEOs of Eucalyptus, GoGrid, ActiveState, Appcara, OpSource and Nortonworks, the CTOs of Rackspace, SoftLayer, SOA Software and AppZero, the Founder & General Manager of Dell Boomi, the VP of Big Data & Streams at IBM and the Chief Strategy Officer at Pacific Controls? Answer: all are shortly to present breakout sessions as members of the distinguished Speaker Facul...
As a Platinum Plus Sponsor of Cloud Expo New York, Rackspace Hosting is offering special passes to SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Rackspace Hosting is the service leader in cloud computing, and a founder of OpenStack, an open source cloud operating system. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers and partners, across a portfolio of IT services, including Manage...
The move to cloud-based applications has undeniably delivered tremendous benefits. However, the associated distribution creates various challenges from the quality perspective:
End-to-end tests need to pass through multiple dependent systems, which are commonly unavailable, evolving, or difficult-to-access for testing.
Accessing such systems often involves transaction and bandwidth fees.
Teams need to test and tune the system under test against a realistic and broad range of performance and ...
In this CTO Power Panel at the 10th International Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, industry-leading CTOs & VPs of Technology will discuss such topics as:
Which do you think is the most important cloud computing standard still to tackle?
Who should and shouldn’t be using a PaaS product today, and why?
Can a public cloud ever be truly secure?
How important is open source to cloud computing and Big Data?
"Mission-critical apps are now safe in the cloud." Tr...
For many of the same reasons that Software-as-a-Service is catching on with enterprise buyers, delivering web services on top of Infrastructure-as-a-Service architectures is appealing to the SaaS developers. Operational agility, lower CapEx, and a broad array of tools and services are on tap that make both public and private IaaS clouds a great platform to build on. But how do you do this securely, especially in the public cloud where you have no access to the network or hypervisor your servers ...
“Big Data eliminates the data silos that formerly existed, improving the depth and quality of analysis that can take place,” observed Scott Kinka, Chief Technology Officer at Evolve IP, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Without these barriers, Kinka continued, “we gain access to information that was never before available. We can see where there are underserved markets, opportunities, problems that need to be addressed.”
Agree or disagree? – "While the IT sa...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now just three weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
In this CEO Power Panel at the 10th International Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, leading executives in the Cloud Computing and Big Data space will be discussing such topics as:
Is it just wishful thinking to depict the Cloud as more than just a technology solution? If not, then what concrete examples best demonstrate cloud computing as an engine of business value?
Big Data has existed since the early days of computing; why, then, do you think there is such...
If your organization already uses virtualized infrastructure, you are well on your way to providing IT as a Service. But as businesses demand faster results in today’s competitive market, organizations look to gain more benefits from cloud computing than just virtualized infrastructure. Learn how to extend & ensure your private cloud investment with a private Platform as a Service (PaaS) and provide on-demand availability, flexibility, control, and ultimately, faster time-to-market for your deve...
I have been having a great debate with one of my colleagues about the changing role of the IT operations (aka “I&O”) function in the context of PaaS. Nobody debates that I&O is responsible and accountable for infrastructure operations.
Application developers (with or without the blessing of Enterpr...
The following are a collection of ongoing industry trends and perspectives polls pertaining to server, storage, IO, networking, cloud, virtualization, data protection (backup, archive, BC and DR) among other related themes and topics.
In addition to those listed below, check out the comments sectio...
Rapid deployment capability is table stakes when we are talking about a PaaS solution. Every vendor touts it, and to be frank, every user simply expects it to be there. While I think it is interesting to talk about rapid deployment and perhaps compare speed of one solution to that of another, I thin...
Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD? Short answer NO not yet.
There is still a place for traditional storage arrays or appliances particular those with extensive features, functionality and reliability availability serviceability (RAS). In other words, there is still a place for large...
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SQL Azure is a relational database solution with the capability to support both ...
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It’s been an interesting day of contrasts in the world of storage, one that shows storage is a diverse and wide ranging segment of IT.
Tape has been part of the discussion on the twitterverse and despite everyone’s best attempts, is not dead yet. Tape and backup may not be seen as cool - but data...
As part of our cloud strategy, we’ve recently released a VMware version of our cloud security offering. It allows cloud providers using VMware, as well as the cloud users themselves, to create an encrypted environment within minutes, while eliminating the complexity around encryption key management ...
Okay – this is easy… or is it?
Lots of people continue to perpetuate the idea that the AWS APIs are a de facto standard, so we should just all move on about it. At the same time, everybody seems to acknowledge the fact that Amazon has never ever indicated that they want to be a true standard. Are...
As I mentioned in my last blog post, the promise of cost reduction is compelling many enterprises to move their workloads into the Cloud but many IT leaders are reluctant to do so, for fear of compromising the security and availability of their services. These concerns are well-founded but the benef...









