Sun Microsystems is keeping with its strategy to
sign tighter agreements with independent software vendors (ISVs), this
time signing content manager Vignette as an OEM
This is the second such arrangement for Sun and a software developer:
in early October, the Santa Clara, Calif., company signed a similar
deal with collaboration software makers Manugistics .
Vignette can now sell its V7 content management software platform
pre-configured on Sun’s Java Systems Directory. It’s a good deal for
the Austin, Texas, ISV, which stands to make inroads with the more than
1.5 billion licensees of the LDAP-based directory server.
Michael Bohlig, Sun director of western global alliances, said there’s
been a shift in trend the past couple years from hardware developers
adapting their systems to accommodate software.
“Now, there’s this emerging trend where they’re looking to us for
software technology as well,” he said. “At the end of the day, it
actually makes our relationship that much tighter with the ISV partners
when we become a part of their software solution.”
It’s a tit-for-tat arrangement: Vignette’s V7 will now come with
support for Sun’s Java Enterprise System components, a software suite of
email, calendar, directory and application server software.
Also included in the support arrangement are the two company’s intention
to develop and support a portlet library connecting V7 and Sun’s System
Portal Server for its customers. The initial focus of the agreement is
to attract attention to the benefits of its Web services framework, J2EE
and marketed.
Therein lies the rub. Two days ago, Sun was one of
four companies that announced the launch of a portlet developer’s
community, where ISVs could come together to trade ideas, advice and
code to build support for the newly-minted Java Specification Request
(JSR)-168, the Java Community Process (JCP) standard for portlets.
Officials for the four sponsoring companies said the SourceForge-hosted community would start a wave of interoperability for developers
trying to get their apps to work with disparate portal servers.
Bohlig said the reason for the joint-company portlet development —
rather than through the SourceForge community — is that JSR is still
evolving and customers from both companies need pre-developed portlets
right away.
When asked whether the portlets would ever find their way onto the
community site, Terri Brown, Sun spokesperson, said the answer was
uncertain.
“When we developed the agreement with Vignette, the SourceForge
initiative was still in development and discussion phase, so that wasn’t
part of our discussions with Vignette,” she said. “At the same time,
Sun supports all standards and open source efforts, so it is certainly a
goal of ours to make it available.”
