In Affiliation  with CNET, Inc.

Related with<Is the Pendulum Swinging Again?>###

 Hi, there!

The sense of "deja vu" about Web Application Servers, when compared to the Network Computing hype, is not justified because while Network Computing was a new model announced with great fanfarre my major Microsoft competitors (Oracle, IBM and Sun), the Web Application Server paradigm is much older and grew on its own merits before it received attention from major IT companies.

Think about the latest time you brought something from Amazon or CDNOW.

Think about the facilities you got from web sites like Fedex. Since the beginning of the Internet, CGI applications, later Server APIs (NSAPI, ISAPI) and then Serve-side scripting tools (PHP, ColdFusion, ASP) enabled increasing power and sophistication from web server applications.

Besides thousands big and small web sites, we have a growing number of intranets using the same tools and technologies as these internet sites, mainly because of the benefits of reduced operational and support costs (no need to install applications on every PC and no need to solve problems by conflicting DLLs and registry settings).

This is not marketing hype, this is reality inside an already big and still rapidly growing number of business.

The comparision with Citrix and Microsoft terminal servers are also unjustified. While these products aim only to reduce the cost of management of PCs by turning them into "enhanced dumb terminals", still running traditional Windows applications, the web application server paradigm servers any platform, be it a PC, a Mac, a RISC workstation, a Network Computer, a Windows Terminal or a handheld device, whatever the OS.

You do not need to change your current infra-strucure: your clients should already have a web browser, and you just need to add a scripting engine to your web server, or enhance it with a specialized application server such as the already stable and mature products like as BEA WebLogic or the newer ones like Oracle 8i or IBM WebSphere.

The current generation of web application server is just the natural evolution of the web development tools, that started with CGI scripts. Just like the client/server development tools and GUI development tools evolved increasing its ease of use, its power and flexibility, web development tools are still evolving to meet users and enterprise needs. This not a radical revolution as the NC paradigm tried, or like the beginning of the PC era was. It is just evolution. Which business do not what to evolve ?

But Executive Software article pointed a nice point: maybe the trend to Application Servers Providers (ASP) do not turn into reality. Most business won't feel comfortable with all his data and applications being off-site. Besides, it's too easy to have all hardware and tools internally and use contract developers when needed.

Internet Service Providers (ISP) need a way to increase their revenues as the regular dial up access and web hosting have tinier and tinier profits. They are the ones interested on being ASP, and Application Server vendors (that is, ISVs) see on them an opportunity to increased revenue. Thus the current market hype. The ISVs will earn money wheter this happens or not. But the ISPs will have a hard time if not.

Contact author: fsl@centroin.com.br

@Macarlo, Inc.
@Macarlo's Shareware & Web
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