EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A NEW GENERATION OF APPLICATIONS
In the past companies have struggled to build cost-effective and manageable architectures to disseminate information and enable mission-critical transactions across the enterprise. This model has never achieved its promise due to a number of factors: the significant overhead involved in developing for multiple client platforms; deploying numerous "fat" applications to the desktop; the inability to easily update applications; and applications' proprietary nature, which limits access to people with a dedicated client application within the same organization. These types of applications generally are not accessible throughout a company, let alone with customers and partners.

Meanwhile, the requirements for business applications have evolved. The economy is more competitive and service-oriented than ever before. The service provided with a product is becoming the critical differential. And internally, the simple access to structured, transactional data is no longer the key. Harnessing the unstructured knowledge spread throughout companies is paramount in a highly competitive economy.

Business is at the threshold of an entirely new model for developing and rolling out Web-based enterprise applications that span the corporate firewall, and integrate customers, suppliers, and business partners. Today's "killer" apps are network-centric business applications that improve service to internal and external customers. For example, a recruitment application could serve internal job candidates and accept external resumes. Because they are based on a common, open intranet infrastructure, these applications can "break down the walls" of interoperability that have existed in the past.

"A corporate Web site can not only handle customer interactions (customer support, sales and service, parts exchange, field service dispatch, and RMA tracking) but can also "extend the enterprise" to deal with vendor account management, inquiry handling, warranty and contracts administration, and a variety of other functions as well."

-Upside magazine, August 5, 1996

The open standards-based Netscape ONE platform enables a new breed of applications that offer the following benefits:

• They impact the top line by increasing customer satisfaction and revenue, while leveraging existing infrastructures.
• They impact the bottom line by streamlining processes and communications with employees, partners, and customers.
• They enable companies to adapt quickly to changing needs because the apps are:
• written once and deployable anywhere;
• dynamically updated with instant client accessibility, because the code resides on the server; and
• reusable and easily repurposed for different departments.

A NEW APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE
SuiteSpot and Netscape Navigator are the foundations of this new generation of applications. Two general categories of applications run on this platform: Network productivity applications are general-purpose applications needed for a productive intranet environment. These types of applications are integral to Netscape SuiteSpot, and deliver capabilities such as publishing, collaboration, messaging, search and indexing, and directory and security. Company-specific applications are applications that build on the network productivity applications and increase the efficiency of business processes.

Company-specific applications are typically implemented within a functional area such as R&D/engineering, customer service, human resources, sales and distribution, finance, and marketing. They are easily extended for doing business with customers and partners. In this new model, each of the functional areas has the task of improving their service for everyone they interact with.

This calls for applications that present data in a meaningful, intuitive format. It also requires applications that enhance the efficiency of all the business processes they own. For example, a sales department provides sales data and customer feedback to relevant departments in the company, such as marketing, and works to automate the sales procedures that are used repeatedly.

Netscape created Netscape AppFoundry to give enterprise customers a fast start in prototyping and building such applications.

"Netscape ONE allows developers to leverage off of existing knowledge in RDBMS design and implementation at an unprecedented rate. We developed a sales and marketing knowledge management system in one month that can be deployed over the corporate intranet immediately to allow both internal and external sales operations access to all the company's sales and marketing literature. It could also be configured for more limited access for distributors and customers. We were impressed with the platform's capabilities and ease of use."


-Sage Solutions