Press Releases

NETSCAPE ANNOUNCES COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY TO "EMBRACE AND INTEGRATE" MICROSOFT PLATFORMS AND TECHNOLOGY

NEW INITIATIVE AIMED AT PROTECTING CUSTOMER INVESTMENTS BY MAKING IT SEAMLESS AND EASY TO USE NETSCAPE SOFTWARE WITH MICROSOFT WINDOWS, OFFICE AND BACKOFFICE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (October 15, 1996) -- Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: NSCP) today announced a comprehensive strategy to "embrace and integrate" Microsoft platforms and technologies in its client and server software and Netscape ONE, the open network environment. The new initiative is aimed at protecting existing customer and developer technology investments by using Netscape technologies to help integrate a variety of popular desktop and server operating systems and databases with Intranets.

As part of its "embrace and integrate strategy," Netscape plans to deliver greater integration with Microsoft Office, BackOffice, Windows 95, Windows NT and OLE/COM/ActiveX technologies in future versions of Netscape SuiteSpot server software and Netscape Communicator client software. Netscape will also simplify migration from Microsoft's legacy development environments and databases to the open-system alternatives embraced by the leaders in the global computer industry.

"Customers want to integrate a broad range of technologies seamlessly on their Intranets," said Marc Andreessen, senior vice president of technology of Netscape. "With this comprehensive strategy, Netscape will help customers unify their existing computing environments with their Intranets to deliver a seamless user, developer and administrator experience."

"Netscape and Sun are working to lead the industry to a new, universal, network-centric computing environment," said Eric Schmidt, chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems. "This announcement will make it easy for customers to transition their existing proprietary investments to the network technologies of the future: Java, Java Beans and Netscape ONE."

Netscape's "embrace and integrate" strategy includes support for the following five key areas:

The new initiative complements Netscape's existing commitment to delivering industry-leading support for common desktop and server operating systems including Mac OS, OS/2, popular versions of UNIX and a variety of databases, including those from Informix, Sybase and Oracle. With more than 45 million computers running Netscape Navigator browser software, Netscape is one of the leading vendors of software products that run on Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT. Netscape is continuing its support for Microsoft operating systems with its newly announced client and server products, which include: In addition, Netscape plans to integrate the Netscape SuiteSpot server family with key Windows NT system services, including: Netscape is committed to interoperating with the relational databases and network management systems customers use. Netscape currently supports Microsoft SQL Server and the Microsoft ODBC database application programming interface in Netscape Enterprise Server and LiveWire Pro and plans to enhance its support going forward.

Netscape also plans to embrace and integrate Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS), which will allow Netscape clients and servers to be managed from within the SMS environment. This support complements Netscape's existing commitment to providing full SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) based capabilities that integrate with leading management platforms such as Hewlett-Packard OpenView, CA/Unicenter, IBM/Tivoli, SUN Solstice and BMC.

Building on Netscape's existing support for Microsoft's OLE and COM technologies on the Windows platform, Netscape plans to further integrate its client products with OLE/COM/ActiveX on Windows 95 and Windows NT desktops. Netscape plans this support to include integrating OLE/COM/ActiveX objects in the LiveConnect object communication framework. In addition, Netscape will support Java Beans.

"Netscape's support for OLE/COM/ActiveX on the Windows desktop will help preserve existing customer and developer investments in those technologies and make it easy for existing Windows components to be integrated into the open-systems, network-centric Intranet applications enabled by the platform-independent Netscape ONE platform," Andreessen said.

Netscape is also committed to integrating its products with Microsoft Office software, enabling customers to take advantage of the Netscape Intranet suite in combination with existing office productivity tools. With Netscape Communicator, users can create and edit documents and spreadsheets within the Netscape interface. In the future, Netscape plans to build additional Microsoft Office integration features into Netscape Communicator, including user interface integration, support for Office file formats and support for Microsoft's DocObjects document framework.

In addition, Netscape is enabling customers to manage the wealth of information and documents within their Intranet environment. Netscape Catalog Server 1.0 and Netscape Enterprise Server 3.0 support indexing and searching of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Future versions of Netscape SuiteSpot servers are scheduled to include additional levels of Office file format support, plus integration with Office 97's Web publishing features so users can easily publish documents to a Netscape server from within Office 97.

Netscape Communications Corporation is a leading provider of open software for linking people and information over enterprise networks and the Internet. The company offers a full line of clients, servers, development tools and commercial applications to create a complete platform for next-generation, live online applications. Traded on NASDAQ under the symbol "NSCP," Netscape Communications Corporation is based in Mountain View, California.

Additional information on Netscape Communications Corporation is available on the Internet at http://home.netscape.com, by sending email to info@netscape.com or by calling 415/937-2555 (corporations) or 415/937-3777 (individuals).

Product features and plans are subject to change. Netscape, the Netscape Communications Corporation logo, Netscape Navigator, Netscape Communicator, Netscape ONE, Netscape Enterprise Server, Netscape Directory Server, Netscape Catalog Server, LiveWire Pro, Netscape FastTrack Server, Netscape SuiteSpot and LiveConnect are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation. All other product names are trademarks of their respective companies.