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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (22058)	10/31/1999 9:03:00 PM
From: jhg_in_kc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Is CTXS a better way to go than SUNW? More Than Ever, Thin Is In The headline on the Sun Ray announcement might as well have been "Sun Microsystems to Citrix Systems: You Were Right." As the successor to Sun's network computer, the JavaStation, the Sun Ray is a thin client very much like those terminals linked to Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) and/or Microsoft's Windows Terminal Server. In fact, the Sun Ray can link to ICA as a way of providing arm's-length access to Windows applications, although Sun execs would much rather talk about how it can be used with Solaris and Java. What's happened here is a movement from a network-centric but relatively intelligent client to a dumb terminal that happens to be more graphical than the green-screens of yesteryear. You can browse the Web on a thin client of this type, but the browser doesn't actually run on the machine in front of you. When you request a Web page, it gets downloaded to a server, which is where all the software for displaying that page actually runs. The results are projected onto your screen. All you need on your desk is a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, and enough computing power for network access. On the other hand, if you happen to have a PC on your desk, it may pay for you to let it play dumb. For example, the ICA client software will let you remotely execute programs that would otherwise require more memory or processing power than you have on your PC. I got a chance to try this style of computing at Citrix's recent iForum conference and was reasonably impressed. The versions of Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer that appeared on my screen both behaved responsively, even though I was sitting in Orlando and the software was actually running in Calgary on servers operated by FutureLink. Citrix calls this "application server computing," which I think is confusing. Instead of a Web application server, it provides what might be better termed a "presentation server." Although Citrix started out with a presentation server for Windows applications, it is developing Java and Unix incarnations. The words "browser" and "thin client" were once used more or less interchangeably. But browsers got fat, and the vision of a network computer as dedicated Java browser never got far. Meanwhile, vendors like Wyse that focused on Citrix's interpretation of the thin client have done well, and PC makers like Compaq and Hewlett-Packard have introduced their own thin clients that support ICA and Windows Terminal Server. By joining this movement, albeit with a different spin, Sun is also taking another step away from its one-time infatuation with Java applets. Remember when applets were supposed to solve all the problems of distributing software? IT would never have to worry about updating users' machines, because they would retrieve the latest code in applet form. But there were too few compelling applets, and the ones with the richest functionality took the longest to download. Over time, Java developers have found ways of making their code leaner. Still, the technologies Sun and its partners developed in response to the demand for richer Java user interfaces remain largely unavailable to browser users. They require a fat Java virtual machine that has yet to become standard equipment on any Web browser. The presentation server approach may be better for Sun anyway, because it helps the company sell servers. So I expect to see variations on this theme as Sun tries to deliver thinner but more functional applications to everyone, not just Sun Ray users. There may be some very complex applets in play, but they'll be downloaded to presentation servers that can be more easily maintained than a horde of desktop JVMs. There are a lot of scenarios where this architecture makes sense, such as extending powerful applications to TV set-top boxes that may not have a lot of computing power. But it won't always be the right answer