The Sun/Netscape Alliance last week announced new server software aimed at helping corporations and service providers conduct the membership management, personalisation, content aggregation, security and legacy integration services needed to run an e-commerce hub site.
The iPlanet Portal Server will act as a proxy between Web browsers and legacy applications, allowing users to view and use those applications in a secure fashion.
The new product will ship with the iPlanet Web Server and Directory Server. It will have built-in application programming interfaces to work with personalization and customer analysis products, such as those from E.piphany, net.Genesis and Net Perceptions. The Portal Server will also work with the optional iPlanet Application Server.
"Corporations have been faced with information overload in this Internet economy," said Tim Minahan, an analyst at Aberdeen Group in Boston. "[The] iPlanet [Portal Server] has the potential to pull all those resources into a logical format."