Catalyst 99 Examines Network Infrastructures Necessary for Emerging E-Business Models.

LAKE TAHOE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 14, 1999--

Conference Achieves Record Attendance Levels: Sees a

number of major industry announcements

The annual Burton Group Catalyst Conference, hosted in partnership with the Network Applications Consortium (NAC), wrapped up proceedings today with record attendance levels and a number of major industry announcements.

According to Jamie Lewis, The Burton Group president, "This is really a watershed event for us. This year's event exceeded our expectations for attendance, content and impact."

The Catalyst Conference, now in it's sixth year, was founded on the mission of bringing together end user companies and vendors on tough infrastructure issues and what it takes to solve them.

"The response to this year's event is indicative of how critical network infrastructure issues are for customers as they attempt to extend their businesses into the Internet economy. We've seen clear progress in the last year, with vendors changing their positions and making significant product announcements.

"And the high degree of user participation in the conference made it clear that many companies are getting serious about network infrastructure development," Lewis added.

Day One: Leveraging the Directory

Day One demonstrated the increasing maturity of the directory market as vendors discussed how meta-directory functions are becoming a part of mainstream directory products. Novell announced DirXML, its meta-directory implementation, and Microsoft discussed its acquisition of Zoomit.

In addition, Bowstreet, Novell, Microsoft, IBM, Sun/Netscape Alliance came together to support the Directory Services Markup Language (DSML), which provides a common way to describe directory information, allowing directories to communicate more easily, both between companies and within companies.

Vendors also discussed the recently announced Directory Interoperability Forum backed by IBM, Novell, Control Data, DCL (Data Connection Limited), Oracle Development Corp., and ISOCOR.

Day Two: Scaling Security

Day Two focused on scalable security, examining the progress in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) standards, authorization services, and customer deployments. Vendor and customer discussions illustrated the fact that, while the industry has made progress over the last year, customers need to proceed carefully given the relatively low levels of interoperability.

But, as both vendors and Burton Group analysts pointed out, the risk of not getting involved with and planning for PKI is far greater than the risk of proceeding with limited pilots and deployments at this early stage of industry development.

The day also demonstrated that PKI products and services are only part of an overall security infrastructure, and that customers need trusted directory services, which Control Data announced support for, and authorization services, as discussed by Netegrity and IBM.

Day Three: Projecting the Infrastructure

Day Three focused on how IBM, Microsoft, and the Sun/Netscape Alliance plan to combine directory and security technologies in a cohesive architecture for intranet and extranet deployment. Those discussions made it clear that, while they're critical, standards alone will not suffice.

Customers need and expect vendors to provide layers of integration that help them manage their heterogeneous environments. For example, Microsoft discussed in detail how it will use the meta-directory technology it gained in its recent acquisition of Zoomit to build intranet and extranet infrastructure.

Zoomit first introduced its approach to meta-directory services at Catalyst in 1995.

"This is only one of a number of examples of how the Catalyst Conference is really driving industry change," added Lewis. "Even during the course of this year's conference we saw customer concerns have a direct impact on vendor product direction." Next year's Catalyst Conference expects even greater attendance and will be help Loews Coronado is San Diego, Calif. July 23-26.

About The Burton Group

The Burton Group is a network planning services company specializing in distributed computing technologies. Through its advisory services, The Burton Group empowers IT professional, enabling them to make strategic decisions regarding network technology and helping them leverage that technology successfully.

The Network Strategy Service consists of in-depth research and analysis of complex network computing technologies. The company's Rapport Consulting and Education Services provide consulting and education in the areas of electronic messaging, directory services, groupware and other Internet/Intranet-based applications.

The company also provides a forum in which network users and vendors can come together to address network computing issues in the annual Burton Group Catalyst Conference. For more information on The Burton Group, visit www.tbg.com