Web-server war: Sunburn for MS

Ashu Kumar in New Delhi

The rivalry between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft has intensified in India with Sun taking the advantage of recent virus attacks on Microsoft’s IIS (Internet Information server) to promote its own web server, iPlanet.

Sun, quoting Gartner’s advise to its clients to replace IIS with ‘more secure’ servers, is busy luring IIS users to migrate to its iPlanet. Microsoft, on the other hand, is shrugging off Sun’s claims saying that its Internet server is secure enough if users activate right options provided in the software.

Sun has recently launched an aggressive discount scheme dangling a 37 per cent cut on iPlanet’s sticker price for migrants from IIS. The company claims that the program is aimed at companies concerned about frequent Microsoft IIS security warnings, including Code Red and Nimda.

According to Sun Microsystems director of systems engineering Anil Valluri, “We are offering a quick and easy way to migrate to iPlanet to reduce the concerns about security vulnerabilities.” The customer response for this program had been encouraging, he claimed.
When contacted by The Financial Express, Microsoft country manager for marketing Daniel Ingitaraj refuted Sun’s claims and said that there was no news about any IIS customer migrating to iPlanet.

“It is not right to say that the server (IIS) is not secure enough. The only installations which have got affected by virus attack were those where users did not upload the patches and did not activate the right options,” he claimed.

According to a Sun Microsystems statement released last week, Gartner contends that alternatives such as iPlanet have much better security records that IIS and are not under active attack by the vast number of virus and worm writers.

Shooting from the hip, a Microsoft official said, “IIS was attacked because of its large base. What would anybody get by attacking iPlanet which has a very small base.”

Quoting an Internet security expert and senior vice president of WatchGuard Technologies, Jack Danahy, Mr Ingitaraj said, “Gartner’s advice, which ignores users’ comfort, familiarity and investment in the Microsoft IIS platform, does not take into account the fact that the alternatives can prove to be just as slippery.

The recommendations indicate a limited understanding of the real reasons why so many systems have inadequate security. This issue has little to do with the Microsoft IIS server, or any platform, but is a consequence of the lack of security awareness, training, and resources in these organizations.”