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

To: Kashish King who wrote (8807)	4/4/1998 4:06:00 AM
From: Scott McPeely	Respond to of 64865

Sun's efforts to push its agenda may undermine JavaOS for Business infoworld.com You've got to give sun credit for making a good effort -- however, JavaOS for Business is a good effort that's about 18 months too late. The plan looks good on paper, but it won't attract enough independent support to play a significant role in corporate computing systems. Now before you start firing up your e-mail program to call me a "Microsoft bigot," let me explain that this is not about Microsoft's Windows CE vs. Sun's OS. It is about reducing risk for your computing environment -- and Sun hasn't demonstrated itself to be a partner worth betting on. Given the amount of roadkill on this path, it appears that Java-based versions of PC applications won't cut it in today's business world. This reality seems odd given that JavaOS and network computers were based on strong fundamental assumptions. NCs answered the demand of corporations that wanted to cut the costs associated with managing corporate computing environments, find easier ways to build (potential) cross-platform applications, and buy less expensive computers. Yet, while Sun and its JavaOS business partners were running around like the Keystone Cops, Microsoft, Intel, and PC manufacturers assessed the threat to their existing gravy trains and responded with managed PCs, great PC-based Java development environments, and sub-$1,000 desktops. Meanwhile, Sun crowed about its latest JavaOS. Unfortunately for Sun (and its potential business partners), it was only talking and not shipping products. Lots of product strategies were presented under the labels of JavaOS for Network Computers, JavaOS for Appliances (now JavaOS for Consumers), PersonalJava, and PicoJava. It is confusing for potential customers to keep track of the constantly changing landscape during the past two years, let alone for developers trying to decide where to bet their company's resources. But having said all this, I don't think that JavaOS for Business is a dead-on-arrival product. Although it won't grow to be the Wintel monopoly-busting product it started out to be, I believe it will be a solid niche product. And in our computing cornucopia, niche products have an increasingly important role. Look at the portable PalmPilot. Starting out as a simple personal organizer, it has become a niche product, providing traveling executives a highly mobile computing tool and non-Windows communications platform. A similar niche play exists for the JavaOS for Business platform. It can offer companies a focused computing platform to deploy custom Java applications. That is assuming that Sun doesn't change its direction again before vendors start shipping. However, IBM's commitment to this OS version should slow Sun's quick mind shifts. But even with IBM's mass, don't expect this new OS to become a major market force. It hasn't worked for OS/2.