SAN FRANCISCO (03/29/2000) - As part of a strategic agreement between Sun Microsystems Inc. and InterWorld Corp., Sun's Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) will be supported by InterWorld's e-commerce product line Commerce Exchange, InterWorld announced today.
The combination of J2EE with Commerce Exchange will create a scalable, out-of-the-box e-commerce software package offering improved interoperability as well as the ability to work with third-party e-commerce tools, said Leon DeMaille, senior vice president of marketing for InterWorld.
"I believe that we are the first packaged application vendor to make this J2EE strategy decision," DeMaille said in a phone interview today. The company declined to specify the financial terms of its strategic agreement with Sun, if any.
Though the target date for complete integration is the fourth quarter of 2001, InterWorld customers will begin experiencing the benefits of Java integration immediately due to InterWorld's ongoing relationship with Sun, DeMaille said.
A vendor of software and services for online business sales, InterWorld has already been supporting Java for about a year, said Charlie Rich, director of strategy and planning for InterWorld. "In supporting J2EE, we are augmenting our already strong support for Java," Rich said.
InterWorld is also working to extend its product integration with Java in a manner that will allow the company's developers to take advantage of possible open standards for Java in the future. "Our long-term outlook, regardless of Sun's position (on open standards for Java), is to be ready to work with anyone. The end game is that we don't want to end up with a vanilla product," Rich said.
Last month, InterWorld and Sun, together with Cisco Systems Inc., announced the launch of e-commerce product Retail Essentials. The jointly developed and marketed product rolls together software, hardware and networking infrastructure into one package designed to help retailers improve or launch e-commerce sites on the Internet. [See "Sun, Cisco, InterWorld Announce E-commerce Package," Feb. 7.] InterWorld, in New York, can be contacted at +1-877-326-6637, or at http://www.interworld.com/. Sun can be reached in Mountain View, California, at +1-650-960-1300 or on the Web at http://www.sun.com/.