Novell today announced the general availability of Novell exteNd 4 suite (previously known as Silverstream eXtend). exteNd consists of a J2EE 1.3 appserver and webservices engine, an integration/business process manager, a portal server, and a visual IDE that ties the suite together.

Check out Novell Announces exteNd 4 Suite and the launch press release.

Novell exteNd 4 Enterprise is priced at $90,000 per server CPU.

According to the Silverstream Web site, which is where the links wind up, the app server is in RC1/beta. How old is some of this stuff? The screen shots of the Workbench look awful. Is it Workbench 2.0 or 4.0? The download page isn't clear.

They should do ECperf, sorry, SPEC jAppServer2001. Silverstream was on the JSR for ECperf 1.1, so what happened?

The 90K/CPU price tag was so unbelievable I had to look. If anyone pays that for *any* developer software (these are tools, servers, and connectors -- not even pre-built apps!), they've got more money than brains.

<quote>
Wizards - Java class, Web Service, Servlet, JSP, EJB(1.2 & 2.0), JavaBean, Tag Library, JSP tag handler
</quote>

Workbench has even EJB 1.2 wizard ! Maybe that's the reson for high price :-)

http://www.silverstream.com/Website/app/en_US/WorkbenchDetail#newfile



Maris

At a company where I consulted at, Novell/SilverStream came in for a sales pitch. To be honest, I was not impressed with what they have to offer. Their portal server is still the old Novell Portal Service which is all servlets running on Novell NetWare and Tomcat natively. Although, it will run on WebLogic. They're saying that it will become Portal Express, and they will have a more robust application as the Novell Portal. I'm not sure if this is happening with the existing release. Their wizards for web services seems interesting. What I really dislike about what all the different companies are doing is packaging everything into a Suite. This way they sell you everything, even though you may not need everything.

In 4.0 all the configurtations of the AppServer are still kept within the databse, and yes you'll still have the same problems just like you did with the previous versions. They are claiming with the next release 5.0, it will be better. I would wait another release since Novell and SilverStream still are trying to merge the technologies together.

I'm not sure what was actually shown at the sales pitch you attended, but Silverstream/eXtend has a portal product (Director) that is wholly separate from the Novell Portal Services product. Novell has said that a future release of Director will include support for the NPS gadgets, but I haven't seen a date for that release. Director has far more functionality than NPS, so I can't imagine confusing them!

They must be kidding...90k/cpu? For that crap? By the way am I the only one who think the new name is realy stupid?

I can't think of any real reason anyone would ever pay that kind of money for any app server, and certainly that app server. No matter what extra functionality and bells/whistles it comes with.

Cheers
Ray

Jun: "They must be kidding...90k/cpu? For that crap? By the way am I the only one who think the new name is realy stupid?"

I would encourage you to write a new review (as balanced as possible) of the software instead of a 20 word summary. If it is "crap" (apologies to Sir Thomas), then I'm sure you can explain why. Likewise the price tag (which is at least part of the article posted here -- usually you don't know the price until the end of an evaluation when you are ready to buy!). Writing something that will be read by lots of people implies a greater responsibility than chatting with a friend, and publicly dissing a product without sufficient explanation is irresponsible, even if you know the product is "crap".

(I haven't used SilverStream in over five years, so I can't speak to its current quality. When I used it, it was pre-Java 1.1 I think, and it was one of the first server + tool combos that were available.)

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

Cameron - Well I'd refer you to the existing reviews/follow-up on this product on this site. Unlike you I have had the pleasure of working this it since version 2.0, and I'm afraid I don't have enough time to list all the bugs ("features") we have to work thru over the years. I just can't believe they would charge this kind of license fee in the current economical environment.

Jun,

I believe you when you say you've had bad experiences, and I have read all the reviews on it. I do think it is fair to criticize, but please try to explain why, so others (like me ;-) can understand what led you to your conclusions.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

That sounds lot of $.

I looked at the feature list and could not find anything in this $90K/CPU offering (except, possibly, for automatic stateful bean failover) that you do not get in $35K/CPU WLS or WAS.

It is possible that they cranked up the list price (the old SilverStream AS was $15K/CPU for Enterprise Edition) so that they later offer discounts of 75 or so percent and leave their customer with a pleasant, albeit unfounded, feeling that they got a good deal.

Please note that the 90k/CPU price tag is the unit price for
- the J2EE 1.3 appserver (recently shipped)
- the exteNd Composer integration server: a whole lot of XML based EAI functionality included here
- the exteND Director interaction server: a portal framework, search server (Autonomy), J2EE based content management service, rules based personalisation service ... etc etc
A lot of features - explaining at least partly the price tag.

The reason why companies like Novell bundle these products into suites is because it is much more economical, both in terms of investments required and in productivity during/after use (through the possibility for integration). This is a very different approach from what companies used to do during the .com hype: instead of going for a best-of-bread approach, they go for a suite. It might not be the best solution for all problems, but I think it is fair to say that there is an argument to be made for it.

As to the "crappy" remarks: I too value well-formulated criticism, but I sincerely dislike cheap remarks like this. In any case, I would like to say that in my experience there isn't a single perfect software product out there, and that the Novell/SilverStream products have come a long way from where they might have been in the past.

Best Regards

Rik

My name is Corey Jackson, I am a Product Manager at Novell (formerly SilverStream). We value everyone's opinion on this board, but I would like to clarify some of the confusion about the AppServer pricing that came up in this thread.

The Novell exteNd Application Server is priced at 10K/cpu with clustering and 5K/cpu without. All versions of the Application Server come with exteNd Workbench, a tool for developing and deploying Web Services and J2EE applications.

The Novell exteNd product suite priced at $90K consists of exteNd Director, a portal and interaction server and exteNd Composer, an integration server and includes the AppServer for free. Director includes a Portal, a Content Management System, a Security System and a Workflow engine. Composer provides connectivity to legacy systems such as 3270 and SAP. These products are also sold separately. While they both come with a free copy of exteNd Application Server, they are also certified to work on WebLogic and WebSphere.

We hope this clears up any confusion anyone may have had on pricing. As for product complaints, I am in Product Management and would be open to hearing your feedback first hand. Please email me at cjackson at novell dot com with any more suggestions and/or complaints about the product.

You can get the info on Novell exteNd products at
  http://www.novell.com/exteNd
The direct links to online "datasheet" for AppServer is at
  http://www.silverstream.com/Website/app/en_US/AppServerDetail


Sincerely,
Corey Jackson
Product Manager
Novell, Inc.
cjackson@novell.com