Monday April 26 12:04 AM ET
Sun To Unveil Software For Mobile Workers
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) Monday will announce new software that will enable mobile workers to reproduce their office desktop on any other computer while they are traveling, using an Internet browser.
The software, called i-Planet, creates a virtual workspace by enabling access to a mobile worker's applications, calendars, files and e-mail on their office desktop, from any Internet browser using Sun's Java programming language.
Sun said i-Planet will enable users to access any applications running in its Solaris operating system (Sun's version of Unix), Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news)'s Windows and Windows NT, Novell Inc. (Nasdaq:NOVL - news)'s NetWare and International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news)'s MVS mainframe operating environment.
''With i-Planet, all you have to do is access a browser, enter the Web and the appropriate authorized information and you have access to your entire intranet,'' said Stuart Wells, senior vice president of the Sun-Netscape alliance. An intranet is a corporate network that uses Internet technology.
In the future, Sun said that i-Planet will also run on personal digital assistants such as the PalmPilot handheld computer and Internet telephones.
Sun said i-Planet has been extensively tested by some of its customers and by Sun itself. At Sun, the software is called Sun.Net, where it is used by 10,000 remote Sun employees. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun said it is saving $10 million annually in network access charges and support costs.
The iPlanet software will be available beginning May 15 and sold through Sun's alliance with Netscape, which is now owned by America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news), and Sun resellers and integrators.
Pricing starts at $10,000 for 100 users and $39,995 for 1,000 users.
Sun also plans to announce Monday a performance engine, called the Java HotSpot Performance Engine, that will increase the performance of the latest version of the Java programming language, Java 2, by 100 percent.
Using Sun's Java language, software developers can write applications once that will run on a variety of computer systems.
Sun plans to make these announcements at the Java Enterprise Solutions Symposium (JESS) in Paris Monday.
''Both (announcements) feed into our broad ''dot com'' strategy,'' Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer said, referring to Sun's strategy to provide tools for corporations to become Internet-enabled. |
