Sun execs make new pitch to embrace Jini

"It's a question of your focus. Do you look outward or do you look inward?" Sun vice president of advanced research Bill Joy asked during a keynote address at Fall Internet World '98 here.

Joy said Sun's Jini technology, which is designed to make it easier for computing devices to communicate with each other, embraces a model that looks outward to a network. He said plans are underway to roll out Jini in December. Joy who joined scheduled keynoter John Gage, director of Sun's Science Office, on stage, said the future of computing will be dominated by small, affordable consumer devices that can easily connect with each other. Gage and Joy said Jini would be open as they took jabs at rival Microsoft Corp., which Joy said propagated a "Soviet style" of computing, where one company controls the entire system.

Architecture for the millennium?
Jini technology is free to researchers but the company eventually plans to charge a licensing fee to companies that make products based on the technology. In December, Sun is expected to unveil more plans and partners for Jini.

During their keynote, the speakers compared the significance of Jini to HTML, a common language that allows people to post information to the Internet. "It's the first software architecture designed for the age of the network," Joy said. "It's software for computers to talk to computers." In contrast, he said HTML is designed to help computers talk to people.

Joy urged Internet World attendees to think about the network when roaming the show floor and looking for Web products. He and Gage predict that eventually machines will be connected to a wireless, high-bandwidth network - which they referred to as "blue tooth" - allowing people to exchange information as easily as they currently do with cellular phones.