Sun answers Microsoft with Net services push

February 6, 2001 — In a move that appears aimed squarely at Microsoft Corp.’s .Net Internet initiative, Sun Microsystems Inc. on Monday unveiled the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE), which includes server software, development tools and other products for building Web-based e-commerce applications and services.

Sun Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Scott McNealy said the effort embraces a series of new and existing software products, including offerings from iPlanet Commerce Solutions, a joint venture between Sun and America Online Inc., as well as services from Sun itself.

Large businesses and service providers will be able to take the tools and applications and use them as components to roll out their own Web-based services to customers and employees, Sun officials said. The effort fulfills an Internet strategy that has been under way at Sun for seven years, according to McNealy.

“Everything we have been doing are Net services,” McNealy said. “We have been doing this for a long time. It’s all we know how to do.”

The Sun ONE framework could be used to offer services, such as a restaurant or a shopping guide, based on a user’s situation, and then deliver the information to PCs, phones or handheld computers. The initiative includes Web services that will be provided by Sun that modify their behavior based on the identity of the user, as well as his location, timing, and level of access permission, the executives said.

Products highlighted here included the Sun ONE Webtop technology developer release 1.0, as well as updates to a slew of iPlanet server software products, which include iPlanet Directory, Web, Application, Portal, Commerce, and Communications servers.

The Webtop technology helps service providers deliver productivity applications via a branded, customized Internet-based desktop that users will be able to access on any type of device, officials said. Sun also claimed the new technology changes Web browsers from “read only” to “read and write.”

The initiative appears to put Sun more into competition than ever with Microsoft, which announced its .Net plans in June last year. Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., and others have unveiled comparable Internet software initiatives.

Like Sun’s, Microsoft’s initiative includes applications and tools for developing new types of productivity, scheduling and commerce services over the Web. Also like Sun, Microsoft’s plan includes some enabling services that will be provided by Microsoft itself. Sun’s effort will likely draw heavily on its Java programming language; Microsoft .Net uses a rival programming language also unveiled last year, C# (pronounced C sharp). Both efforts make heavy use of XML (extensible markup language).

Sun was among the first of the big IT vendors to promote the idea of network computing and Web-based services, but some observers have criticized it for being slow to bring its Web services strategy to market. Executives seemed at pains to emphasize that Sun has been focused on the Internet for longer than its rivals.

“We have more software developers now than hardware developers, this is not something we thought of a few months ago,” said Ed Zander, Sun’s president and chief operating officer.

Indeed, McNealy is even starting to dress like a software developer. Ever the showman, he took the stage in a baseball cap with a long, fake ponytail down his back. “Everyone’s asking me whether I’m into software,” he said. “Well, don’t I look like a software developer?”

Sun announced a number of partnerships to kick off its Sun ONE launch.

Qwest Communications International Inc. said it would choose Sun as the preferred provider of Unix-based hardware and software for its CyberCenter hosting facilities. Service provider Genuity Inc. will base its flagship Black Rocket tools for setting up Internet access, security, and managed Web applications for customers on Sun’s Internet computing platform. In addition, Deutsche Bank will use iPlanet’s BillerXpert B2B Edition software as the foundation for a new bill presentment and payment service, called db-eBills.

Also Monday, Sun introduced its Sun ONE Forte for Java software and Sun ONE iPlanet Process Manager products.

The iPlanet venture was formed in 1999 through a three-way deal between Sun, AOL, and Netscape Communications Corp., which is now part of AOL, which in turn is part of Time Warner AOL Inc. iPlanet offers an application server as well as software for deploying e-commerce services and other applications.

After .Net?

Analysts said that Sun’s announcement is a direct reaction to the Web services other vendors have been touting, including IBM’s Application Framework for e-Business, Microsoft’s .Net, Hewlett-Packard’s e-services and Oracle’s Dynamic Services Framework.

“Overall, Sun is trying to beef up the software side of its business,” said Kimberly Knickle, an analyst at AMR Research in Boston.

With its end-to-end solution, Sun is going after a slice of the same pie that IBM is chasing with its WebSphere servers and tools.

“Going forward, Sun is positioned with IBM and Oracle to provide a front-line application development, deployment, and integration stack,” said Dana Gardner, an analyst at Aberdeen Group in Boston. “Sun and IBM are going like gangbusters to carve out pieces of this market because that is the next big segment that will be lucrative in the coming five years.”

Gardner added that other players in the market include IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems, and, to some extent, Hewlett-Packard.

IBM, for its part, claims that Sun is late to the ball game.

“In our view, Sun is starting to come around to what we have been talking about for more than a year,” said Scott Hebner, IBM’s director of marketing for WebSphere.

Even with most of the major vendors supporting Web services standards, analysts predict that the picture vendors paint of Web services being interoperable with each other won’t occur until the second or third generation of Web services.

“It’s not for nothing that everybody is jumping on this bandwagon, but [Web services] won’t translate into anything really useful anytime soon,” said Will Zacchmann, a vice president at Meta Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

With its software strategy, Sun is working to leave behind its reputation of being a hardware behemoth that only builds software as a means to sell expensive big iron.

Analysts said that Sun has been struggling to move beyond its hardware-centric notoriety.

“That mentality is outdated,” Aberdeen’s Gardner said. “Sun has come a long way in proving that it has good software.”

Sun, while dominant in the Unix server arena, has also branched out into a variety of software types, such as storage and, of course, the Java platform and language.

This story includes material by Tom Sullivan, InfoWorld.com

Source: www.infoworld.com