Sun To Unveil Much-Vaunted Jini Technology
6.01 p.m. ET (2301 GMT) January 24, 1999
SAN FRANCISCO — Sun Microsystems Inc. will formally
unveil Monday a much-vaunted new technology called Jini that
seeks to make connecting any computing device to a computer
network as easy as plugging in a telephone.
Sun will announce that 35 companies -- from disk-drive makers
like Seagate Corp. and Quantum Corp. to consumer electronics
giants Philips Electronics and Sony Corp. to printer behemoth
Hewlett-Packard Co. -- are licensing the technology, which it
hopes will be used in everything from printers to television set-top
boxes to dishwashers.
Jini, which has already garnered much media attention, is
software that Sun hopes will make computers and all kinds of
devices much easier to use. Sun's Java programming language,
which lets programmers write an application once to run on many
systems, is the core of the Jini technology.
A Jini-enabled device works by announcing itself to the network,
which will immediately be able to understand what kind of device
was just plugged in and what kind of software drivers are
necessary and the capabilities of the device.
"That is the goal, to make it as simple and as intuitive as how you
use your telephone and your cellphone,'' said Mike Clary, general
manager for Jini.
For a few years, Jini was a top-secret project, headed by Bill Joy,
Sun's co-founder and now chief scientist, who works in a remote
Sun location in Aspen, Colo. Almost two years ago, more
engineers joined the project, including Jim Waldo, now Jini's chief
architect with a team of about 45 engineers.
Sun plans to offer Jini in a community source code model, similar
to what it has done with the Java language. The code is free to
software developers who are working in research or using Jini for
their own internal deployment.
If a company has a commercial use of Jini, it will pay Palo Alto,
Calif.-based Sun a nominal licensing fee, for the use of its Jini
logo to cover the trademark costs, of either 10 cents per unit or
$250,000 per year, per product line.
Some of the companies are expected to have products
incorporating Jini rather soon, such as Quantum, which is
expected to have a Jini-ready disk drive this year. But analysts
and industry executives said Jini is still in its very early stages in
the new technology product cycle.
"This is a real immature marketplace,'' said Rod Smith, director
of Internet technology at International Business Machines Corp.
"Our joy is to participate to sort things out ... There are parts of
Jini that are in pretty good shape.''
IBM, Microsoft Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc. are also
working on technologies with a goal of connecting disparate
devices on a network. Smith said that IBM's T-Spaces project is
complementary with Jini because T-Spaces lets computers and
devices share network services such as messages, database
queries, and print jobs.
"Jini represents a whole new economic opportunity for these
people who get involved,'' said Clary, adding that Jini will make it
easier for companies to offer network services that have not been
possible before.
For example, Kinko's, the chain of printing and computing
centers, plans an application where one Kinko's outlet can have a
document printed in a remote city for someone else to pick up.
Bosch Siemens in Germany plans a dishwasher that can be
remotely diagnosed for problems by technicians.
"Jini is a great idea, but Sun has a ton of work to do to get it into
something I can buy,'' said Eric Brown, an analyst at Forrester
Research in Cambridge, Mass. "Sun is outstanding in technology
vision, and like Java, they now have execution on their plate ...
(But) I would not hold my breath for Jini this year.''
Competition from other technologies, such as the recently
announced Universal Plug and Play effort from Microsoft, could
also cause some confusion and may foster a wait-and-see attitude
in the industry, analysts said.
"(Microsoft) still has to deal with the legacy and the installed base
of the millions of PCs out there,'' said David Smith, a Gartner
Group analyst. "When you start with a clean slate, such as Sun
has with Java, you can do a lot of things.''
Sun said that it is making the Jini technology source code
available Monday and some of the first products will be available
later this year and in 2000, targeted to the small home office
market.
"Initially, we will see it in the small office/home office market,
where they don't have professionals configuring this stuff
(networks),Clary said. ''Then we will see it as these networks invade the home.'' |
