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

To: Goldbug Guru who wrote (13981)	1/26/1999 3:11:00 AM
From: Goldbug Guru	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Party on, Jini By Owen Thomas Red Herring Online January 25, 1999 SAN FRANCISCO -- BizTone chief strategist Miko Matsumura thinks that Sun Microsystems's (SUNW) Jini technology is one big party. "It's about dynamic discovery," says the former Sun Java evangelist. "It's about joining, and this very low barrier to entry to interact, and being unsure of what's going to result when you get there." Indeed, it's not yet clear what Jini -- a Sun-developed "spontaneous networking" technology written in Java that will allow almost-universal connection of computing devices -- will portend for the world of startups, many of which are already making bets on Java. FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES Sun, which officially announced Jini Monday at the Sheraton Palace in downtown San Francisco, is putting the emphasis on big industry names. The 30-some partners endorsing Jini today include America Online, which had already signed a deal with Sun endorsing its technologies when AOL acquired Netscape late last year; Nokia, the Finnish cell phone manufacturer; 3Com's Palm Computing division; IBM, a major Java supporter; storage manufacturer Seagate; consumer electronics firm Toshiba; and printer-maker Canon. Jini is also gathering support from Novell (NOVL), which inked a deal with Sun. Sun and Novell will explore ways to integrate Jini with Novell Directory Services, a cross-platform technology for managing networks. "I think [directories and Jini] are pretty complementary," says Steve Adelman, vice president of corporate development at Novell. "The hierarchy of Jini above the network is a directory." But BizTone is the only startup is showing off its technology at Monday's event. The two-year-old Malaysian startup is using Jini to offer mainstream business services, like accounting or other enterprise resource planning tasks, across a network. Mr. Matsumura observes that startups already coding in Java will find it easy to enable their software for Jini. "Jini's all written in Java, so if you have a Java application, it's really easy to expose that as a [Jini] service," says Mr. Matsumura. "Shockingly easy, really." Programmers will only have to add a few lines of code to let Jini-enabled devices and software interact with their programs over a network, he says. Samir Mitra, a Sun business development executive, says he knows of "eight or so" startups already working on Jini projects. "We've been getting proposals and ideas nonstop," he says. While he didn't name the companies, Mr. Mitra says the Jini startups were exploring applications frameworks; building custom hardware and software devices for network connections; managing devices remotely; and connecting dedicated, single-purpose servers. POWERFUL ENEMIES Jini will face competition from Lucent's (LU) Inferno and Limbo, a Java-like programming language and operating system. Microsoft (MSFT) has also been working on Jini-like networking technologies. And Hewlett-Packard (HWP) is hoping to protect its niche in printers, scanners, and other imaging technologies with JetSend, specialized communications software that lets devices negotiate document formats automatically without the need for specialized software drivers. Still, Jini has a head start. And Mr. Matsumura points out that Jini will benefit from the momentum Java has built up. However, he concedes that Microsoft could pull together several of its research projects and roll out something like Jini in the future. "That would be like them throwing another party the same night, and trying to get everyone to go to that instead," Mr. Matsumura jokes. Jini may launch with a party, but it faces some troubles ahead. Scott McNealy, Sun's CEO, closed the press conference by saying that for consumers, Jini's message is "simply connect." That slogan could also serve as the company's strategy for winning the upcoming consumer-device networking battle: Sun needs to connect to partners that will support its new technology. Sun chief scientist John Gage demoed Jini in November at NDA '98. Printer-friendly version. Email this article to a friend. Mobile computing and data warehouse markets are all the rage, or are they? Share your two cents on our message boards.