Services on demand

This is some extracts from a white paper by sun on "Implementing Services on Demand With the Sun Open Net Environment".
At Sun, we view Services on Demand as the most realistic and viable approach for companies moving towards the development and deployment of Web-based services. The Services on Demand vision recognizes that businesses will need to use and support a variety of service delivery styles, such as traditional dedicated applications, Web applications, Web services, and future Web services. And the Services on Demand model includes all of these styles.
The raw materials for building the services that are offered to the community are the data, applications, reports, and transactions that are the information assets of an enterprise.
The first step in turning the raw information assets into value for the community is creating a directory of both the assets and the community. This is the role of the iPlanet Directory Server, and it sits in the middle of every connection from the assets to the community. The iPlanet Directory Server is the core of an LDAP-based, multipurpose directory framework that acts as both an information repository and a policy management infrastructure. As a result, it not only provides enterprise-wide and extranet-wide access to information about the supported communities and information assets, it also provides authentication, authorization, non-repudiation, metering, rating (pricing), and billing support.
The iPlanet Directory Server suite of software includes a number of auxiliary tools to fulfill this central role:

iPlanet Meta-Directory:

integration between the master LDAP directory and all of the special purpose directories throughout an enterprise (such as PeopleSoft, SAP, Microsoft Active Directory, etc.)

iPlanet Certificate Management System:

A digital certificate management system for producing, signing, and distributing the digital tokens that implement a typical chain- of-trust authentication and authorization mechanism.

iPlanet Policy Server:

A framework for defining access and authorization rights for the enterprise.

iPlanet Directory Access Router:

A load-balancing mechanism for examining and re- directing LDAP requests to appropriate servers and an invaluable aid to scaling and distributing directory resources.

There are various components of iPlanet Server e.g

iPlanet Portal Server

It does the content aggregation and customization and secure remote acces, Instant Collaboration Pack, Personalized Knowledge Access Pack, Access Pack (includes a Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) server), and Secure Remote Access Pack.

iPlanet Integration Server, EAI Edition (formerly the Forte Fusion product)

The iPlanet Integration Server is a framework for integrating a variety of legacy applications. such as SAP and PeopleSoft (using available connectors), and defining workflows that create single services from a variety of functions that cross services.

iPlanet Integration Server, B2B Edition (formerly iPlanet ECXpert).

B2B Edition is a facility for secure document exchange.

iPlanet Messanging and Calendar Servers

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