Sun's Jini jousts with rivals
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 22, 1999, 7:35 a.m. PT
news analysis The race is on to create the universal fabric
that could supplant today's ungainly networking technology,
as Sun is set to debut its technology called Jini.
Several companies, believing today's networking too cumbersome
or limited, are working on technologies that connect everything from
light switches to supercomputers in one ubiquitous network. The
idea is to reap the benefits of ever-broader networks without having
to deal with obtuse, unwieldy technology.
But as often happens with high-technology efforts in their infancy,
big-name companies will compete to establish their own vision of a
universal network, thereby creating some confusion along the way.
Many of the biggest names in computing are scrambling to set the
standards and line up supporters including Sun Microsystems,
Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Lucent.
After several previews, Sun will formally unveil its Jini technology in
San Francisco on Monday. Several companies have licensed the
Java-based technology, which allows the "spontaneous networking"
of devices. And network hardware maker Cisco demonstrated a
Jini-powered cable modem earlier this month, and Sun executives
showed a free-standing Jini hard disk from Quantum in December.
Sun says Jini will let traveling businessmen easily plug into hotel
printers, let parents at work peek through child-monitoring cameras
at home, and let people turn up the air conditioning before they get
home. When a Jini-enabled device plugs into a network, it
automatically announces itself and its capabilities.
Meanwhile, Sun arch rival Microsoft, eyeing the approach of Jini,
hastened to take the wraps off its Universal Plug and Play initiative
at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. Microsoft's
technology is an extension of the Plug and Play hardware
recognition system introduced with Windows 95, but it will let
people tie together devices without needing a computer. With it,
devices announce themselves and their capabilities when plugged
into a network.
"We're looking at this with the view that all kinds of devices not
currently networked today are going to want to be networked," said
Alec Saunders of Microsoft's intelligent appliances division.
Universal Plug and Play will work with "smart objects" such as light
switches or volume controls, intelligent appliances such as
Web-enabled telephones, or computers.
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Microsoft has found support from Compaq, Intel, ATI, 3Com, AMD,
Kodak, and others.
But Sun designed Jini from scratch, and therefore unlike Microsoft
isn't hampered by having to support the "ancient" architecture of
the PC, said Gartner Group analyst David Smith.
"I see Universal Plug and Play as an evolution of technology, an
incremental improvement to an OK solution. I see Jini as
something that is much more elegant, part of the overall movement
to network computing and ubiquitous devices," Smith said.
Sun and Microsoft have similar
intentions for their technologies: Both
companies believe their network
technologies will drive sales of more
traditional products such as operating
systems and servers.
Microsoft criticized Java as an
out-of-the blue technology where
Universal Plug and Play uses existing
Internet communications standards
and registration services. "We're
leveraging a big heritage of existing
technologies, bringing Internet
technologies into a new class of
devices," Saunders said.
Jim Waldo, Jini's chief architect,
though, spurned Universal Plug and
Play as a mere initiative that checks
all the boxes on the "buzzword bingo
card." It's far behind Jini, which has
had beta software out for months and
will be launched as a product
Monday, Waldo said.
Microsoft says Universal Plug and Play devices won't need to have
a computer on the network, but will be able to take advantage of
one if it's there. Jini is designed to bypass computers
altogether, Waldo said: "All we require is Java someplace on
the network."
Farther out into the future, Microsoft's research arm is
working on another networking project, an operating system
called Millennium that lets computers share tasks across a
network, automatically adjusting to new components being
added or removed.
One Millennium prototype called "Borg" is a Java virtual
machine that can make a cluster of computers look like a
single one when running Java programs. Another prototype,
called Continuum is similar, but adds support for other
programming languages such as Visual Basic, C, and C++.
Sun and Microsoft have the most prominent efforts, but they
aren't the only big names in the business of redefining how
networks happen. HP, Lucent, and IBM all have plans of
their own.
HP's JetSend
Hewlett-Packard
introduced its
JetSend
technology in 1997
as a way to shield
users from the
complexities of
different document
formats, said HP's
Kipp Martel. The
technology
complements both
Universal Plug and
Play as well as
Jini, Martel said.
The technology
lets two devices
negotiate the best
way to share
documents so, for
example, a
JetSend-enabled
printer could
accept an image
from a
JetSend-enabled
digital camera.
The two devices
communicate to
figure out what
common format
will preserve the
image quality
best. JetSend also
could let a cable
TV operator send
video on demand
over a network
without having to
worry about what
devices the viewer
will use.
While the
company has
deployed JetSend
in its own printers
and, more
recently, scanners
as well, HP will
next move
JetSend into
computers this
spring, Martel
said. This will
allow the computer
to take over JetSend communications for non
JetSend-enabled devices, he said.
JetSend is the Esperanto of the computing world, Martel
said, promising "universal viewability," Martel said. HP's
JetSend-enabled CapShare 910 hand-held scanner transfers
scanned images to computers using Adobe's cross-platform
Portable Document Format (PDF).
JetSend has been licensed by several companies, including
Panasonic, Minolta, Siemens, Xerox, and Canon.
HP will support CapShare both for Jini and Universal Plug
and Play, even though it costs more to support two
platforms, Martel said. "We are committed to this vision of a
world of seamless connectivity," he said.
Lucent's Inferno
Lucent's Inferno effort gives equipment such as smart
phones, Internet appliances, or set-top boxes a
small-footprint operating system that can connect to
networks or run programs within a virtual machine. The
system currently supports programs written in Lucent's
Limbo language or Sun's stripped-down version of Java
called PersonalJava.
Inferno was publicly announced in 1997, but Smith has seen
little progress since. "It's a fantastically well-designed piece
of work. It's very applicable in today's world of the Internet,
it's just that Lucent has not been able to market it," Smith
said.
Lucent declined to comment for this story, but said Inferno
can be used in a lot of the same ways as Jini. "Right now
we're in the process of working on applications and
technology related to specific markets, but it would be
premature to comment on that now," said spokeswoman
Barbara McClurken. Lucent expects to make a new Inferno
announcement in "a couple of months," she said.
IBM's T Spaces
IBM's research wing, meanwhile, is working on a Java-based
technology called T Spaces that lets computers, digital
assistants, and other devices share data such as email or
database queries.
The technology complements Jini and helps to achieve the
common goal of "pervasive computing." However, T Spaces
is only one of IBM's projects from its research labs that
applies to that future world.
An IBM paper notes that T Spaces "basically connects all
things to all things," and can run on very small devices. The
technology would make it easy for resources such as
printers, scanners, fax machines, or software services to be
shared across networks with lots of different kinds of
computers.
All these different technologies have appeal, Gartner Group's
Smith said, but are likely to show up first in homes and
small offices. It's hard to manage systems of thousands of
devices attached to networks, he said.
But as the systems catch on, they'll likely "trickle up" to
higher levels as the networking technologies become more
robust and pervasive, he said.
"There is a tremendous desire to move us toward
easier-to-use networking," Smith said.
Intel has a technology too which it is promoting as the
"Home Network API" in an effort to develop a common
method for computerized control of home devices and Sun
and Philips are providing a similar technology called HAVi.
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