Sun Microsystems has software envy.
Tired of its reputation as a hardware company that also happens to hawk some software, Sun (sunw) is planning to kick off a three-day analyst meeting on Feb. 5 with a day of announcements aimed at proving it's a software contender.
Sun is expected to discuss a number of Web services products, now in development, which simplify the development of Web-based software and are intended to compete with similar technologies already announced by Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, sources said.
Microsoft (msft) introduced its Microsoft.Net plan last summer, while HP (hwp) and IBM (ibm) have been delivering various Web services components over the past few years. Oracle (orcl) jumped into the Web services fray just last month.
Like its rivals, Sun envisions a future in which people don't have to install software on their PCs or Internet access devices. Instead, they will be able to access the software through the Web as a service, avoiding installation, maintenance and upgrade chores.
Analysts say early examples of Web services include the delivery of stock quotes and weather reports to cell phones and the ability to rent software, such as accounting or word processing programs, through Web sites.
Future Web services will allow e-businesses to pick and choose which services they want to subscribe to. For example, executives at an e-commerce Web site that needs a credit card validation service can do a search, find the service with the cheapest transaction fees, and then automatically subscribe and use that service.
A key component of Sun's strategy is a software tool kit, code-named Brazil, which is aimed at simplifying the development of Web-enabled applications. Sun, like its competitors, sees the delivery of tools that can make fast work of services development as crucial to its plan.
Officials at Sun's iPlanet division confirmed that Sun's Brazil project, along with its iPlanet platform, are part of a long-term "vision" for creating reusable Internet services that Sun will roll out over the next few months.
"We've been talking about the service-driven network for some time," noted iPlanet product marketing director Sanjay Sarathy.
However, to date, Sun has failed to provide--or even explain--a comprehensive development framework to which programmers can write Web-enabled applications.
Brazil, in development over the past two years by Sun Labs, is downloadable in an early test code version under a quasi-open-source license called Sun Community Source License.
A spokesman for Sun Labs called Brazil "experimental" said there was no timetable for turning Brazil into a shipping product.
According to Sun's Web site, "The Brazil project is an experimental web application development environment ideal for web-enabling devices, aggregating content from other web applications, and building personal web portals that filter and modify aggregated content."
At the core of Brazil, just like the core of Microsoft's .Net software-as-a-services architecture, is a Web application framework, or core development platform. Sun Labs originally developed the framework as a way to provide a URL-based interface to smart cards, according to the Sun Web site. The Brazil framework expanded to encompass all kinds of applications and devices.
Like Microsoft's .Net framework, the Brazil platform is meant to allow developers to combine reusable components over the Web to create larger, Web-enabled applications. Unlike the .Net framework, which Microsoft has said will be language-independent and allow even Java programmers to write Web-enabled applications, Sun's Brazil framework is targeted, at least for now, at Java programmers only.
Even with Brazil and the coming services announcement, Sun's software strategy remains a mystery. Sun CEO Scott McNealy recently went so far as to claim recently that the company does not have one.
In an interview in December, McNealy said Sun is pursuing a "systems strategy," creating an integrated hardware-software stack loaded with Solaris, iPlanet, Java, clustering, storage and so on that Sun will shrinkwrap and sell to service providers. McNealy said software, voice over IP, media, entertainment, data and audio are all converging onto a Sun system, which he calls a "Big Freaking WebTone Switch." WebTone is Sun's concept of Web services that are always available, from any location, in much the same manner as a telephone dial tone.
McNealy said he is taking a page from the playbook of outgoing General Electric CEO Jack Welch. "When (customers) turn it on, then we start charging--power by the hour... Nobody is even close to owning his own integrated stack. We're browser-based, and that's why we're growing," he said.
Amy Wohl, market analyst and president of Wohl Associates, questioned McNealy's reasoning. She said Sun remains a hardware company that, unlike IBM, has had no business model for making money from software.
"Every time Sun does one of these announcements, I'm reminded that they have not been good at getting people to sign up in interesting volumes for the preceding pieces. Sun has lots of interesting ideas, but the sign-up has been thin," said Wohl.
Indeed, Sun has been talking about the network as the computer for close to a decade. Three years ago, Sun took an initial stab at delivering software as a service through Jini, its plan for networking devices, independent of the underlying wire protocol. But with the rise to prominence of the Extensible Markup Language (XML)--a protocol for exchanging data seamlessly over the Net--the usefulness of a hardware-centric strategy like Jini has diminished.
Sun Microsystems has software envy.
Tired of its reputation as a hardware company that also happens to hawk some software, Sun (sunw) is planning to kick off a three-day analyst meeting on Feb. 5 with a day of announcements aimed at proving it's a software contender.
Sun is expected to discuss a number of Web services products, now in development, which simplify the development of Web-based software and are intended to compete with similar technologies already announced by Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, sources said.
Microsoft (msft) introduced its Microsoft.Net plan last summer, while HP (hwp) and IBM (ibm) have been delivering various Web services components over the past few years. Oracle (orcl) jumped into the Web services fray just last month.
Like its rivals, Sun envisions a future in which people don't have to install software on their PCs or Internet access devices. Instead, they will be able to access the software through the Web as a service, avoiding installation, maintenance and upgrade chores.
Analysts say early examples of Web services include the delivery of stock quotes and weather reports to cell phones and the ability to rent software, such as accounting or word processing programs, through Web sites.
Future Web services will allow e-businesses to pick and choose which services they want to subscribe to. For example, executives at an e-commerce Web site that needs a credit card validation service can do a search, find the service with the cheapest transaction fees, and then automatically subscribe and use that service.
A key component of Sun's strategy is a software tool kit, code-named Brazil, which is aimed at simplifying the development of Web-enabled applications. Sun, like its competitors, sees the delivery of tools that can make fast work of services development as crucial to its plan.
Officials at Sun's iPlanet division confirmed that Sun's Brazil project, along with its iPlanet platform, are part of a long-term "vision" for creating reusable Internet services that Sun will roll out over the next few months.
"We've been talking about the service-driven network for some time," noted iPlanet product marketing director Sanjay Sarathy.
However, to date, Sun has failed to provide--or even explain--a comprehensive development framework to which programmers can write Web-enabled applications.
Brazil, in development over the past two years by Sun Labs, is downloadable in an early test code version under a quasi-open-source license called Sun Community Source License.
A spokesman for Sun Labs called Brazil "experimental" said there was no timetable for turning Brazil into a shipping product.
According to Sun's Web site, "The Brazil project is an experimental web application development environment ideal for web-enabling devices, aggregating content from other web applications, and building personal web portals that filter and modify aggregated content."
At the core of Brazil, just like the core of Microsoft's .Net software-as-a-services architecture, is a Web application framework, or core development platform. Sun Labs originally developed the framework as a way to provide a URL-based interface to smart cards, according to the Sun Web site. The Brazil framework expanded to encompass all kinds of applications and devices.
Like Microsoft's .Net framework, the Brazil platform is meant to allow developers to combine reusable components over the Web to create larger, Web-enabled applications. Unlike the .Net framework, which Microsoft has said will be language-independent and allow even Java programmers to write Web-enabled applications, Sun's Brazil framework is targeted, at least for now, at Java programmers only.
Even with Brazil and the coming services announcement, Sun's software strategy remains a mystery. Sun CEO Scott McNealy recently went so far as to claim recently that the company does not have one.
In an interview in December, McNealy said Sun is pursuing a "systems strategy," creating an integrated hardware-software stack loaded with Solaris, iPlanet, Java, clustering, storage and so on that Sun will shrinkwrap and sell to service providers. McNealy said software, voice over IP, media, entertainment, data and audio are all converging onto a Sun system, which he calls a "Big Freaking WebTone Switch." WebTone is Sun's concept of Web services that are always available, from any location, in much the same manner as a telephone dial tone.
McNealy said he is taking a page from the playbook of outgoing General Electric CEO Jack Welch. "When (customers) turn it on, then we start charging--power by the hour... Nobody is even close to owning his own integrated stack. We're browser-based, and that's why we're growing," he said.
Amy Wohl, market analyst and president of Wohl Associates, questioned McNealy's reasoning. She said Sun remains a hardware company that, unlike IBM, has had no business model for making money from software.
"Every time Sun does one of these announcements, I'm reminded that they have not been good at getting people to sign up in interesting volumes for the preceding pieces. Sun has lots of interesting ideas, but the sign-up has been thin," said Wohl.
Indeed, Sun has been talking about the network as the computer for close to a decade. Three years ago, Sun took an initial stab at delivering software as a service through Jini, its plan for networking devices, independent of the underlying wire protocol. But with the rise to prominence of the Extensible Markup Language (XML)--a protocol for exchanging data seamlessly over the Net--the usefulness of a hardware-centric strategy like Jini has diminished.
