News

Netscape to Resell Netegrity's SiteMinder, Integrated with Netscape Directory Server

• By Scott Bekker
• January 13, 1999

This agreement builds on Netegrity's previously announced agreement with Netscape's Government Group and will be phased in over 1999. Effective immediately, Netegrity and Netscape will jointly focus on delivering Web-based e-commerce applications to select domestic Fortune 500 customers, in addition to U.S. federal, state and local governments.

``Customers deploying Web-based e-commerce applications have expressed a strong need for centralized access control and single sign-on," says David Weiden, vice president of Netscape's Directory Server and Security Products. ``SiteMinder allows us to offer an integrated solution that meets the significant scalability and security requirements of customers operating strategic e-commerce Web sites."

The companies report combining the Netscape Directory Server and SiteMinder will provide centralized access control and single Web sign-on across heterogeneous Web servers, operating systems and application development platforms.

According to the May 1998 report ``Scaling Extranets" from Forrester Research, more than half of the Fortune 1,000 are using extranets today, and more than 80 percent are planning to offer extranets within the next two years. The report asserts that deployments are small today, but as businesses strive for improved communication with partners and long-term cost savings, extranets will explode. Forrester concludes that IT needs an architecture that will allow it to delegate day-to-day extranet administration to business units, yet provides enough centralized control for it to monitor and troubleshoot the systems. -- Brian Ploskina, Assistant Editor