Apache, the popular Web server that runs a majority of sites on the Internet, is poised for growth in enterprise data centers as companies Web-enable business applications.

"Web servers are becoming increasingly important as more and more applications are built to be accessed using a Web browser," says Dan Kusnetzky, vice president of system software at IDC, which predicts that the Web server software market will jump from $852 million in 2002 to about $1.7 billion in 2007.

Those figures don't include free software such as Apache, Kusnetzky points out, but he says that as Linux becomes more widely used in enterprise installations, Apache is likely to be the Web server that goes with it.

In addition, because Apache runs on multiple platforms, it can be used to consolidate access to Web-based applications running on heterogeneous systems. With other offerings such as Sun's Sun One Web server and Microsoft's Internet Information Server, users typically are tied to the vendor's platforms, Kusnetzky says.

About two-thirds of active Web sites use Apache, according to technology tracking company Netcraft. By contrast, Microsoft accounts for just one-quarter of Web sites, and Sun One has about 1%.

A challenge for Apache as it moves into enterprise data centers, however, is that it doesn't provide the management tools and user interfaces that companies are used to with commercial products. Covalent Technologies, a company formed by a group of Apache developers, is addressing that problem by providing enterprise products and support for Apache deployments. Its customers include Johnson & Johnson, General Electric and Fidelity Investments.

"There is growing adoption of Apache in Fortune 1000-type companies, and those companies are used to having products that have an enterprise-ready set of characteristics," says John Jack, CEO of Covalent.

"In other words, you can install them, you can update them, you can manage them. Those companies also are used to having an enterprise-class vendor behind the product so that there is somebody to call for support services, questions, whatever. Covalent provides those things," he says.

Pacific Life Insurance Company in Newport Beach, Calif., began using the Apache Web server several years ago to support a Web-based version of its human resources application. It chose Apache because of its Unix roots and because of the security, stability and scalability the product offers, says Scott Johnson, assistant vice president of human resources technology at Pacific Life.

As its Web-based applications have become more sophisticated and more widely used, however, Pacific Life turned to Covalent for help.

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