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

To: QwikSand who wrote (15733)	4/26/1999 3:44:00 AM
From: QwikSand	Respond to of 64865

From today's WSJ. Wake up & smell the coffee all you SUNW shorts. Read the article a few times and maybe it will start to sink in. (Probably not.) This article leaves a lot unsaid about the lucrative role that Sun is certain to play in the small-device client side of this picture with Java and Jini (which are not free), but the server side alone is enough, if you actually think about it instead of just saying "Linux can do that too." Regards, --QwikSand By David P. Hamilton, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to simplify the process of connecting to a corporate-computer network for workers who are outside the office. The Palo Alto, Calif., computer maker today plans to announce software that lets computer users on the road or at home connect with their parent networks using only a World Wide Web browser, eliminating unique personal-computer software or the need to dial up the corporate network directly with a modem. Sun's product, called i-Planet, is designed to provide secure access to corporate-electronic mail, personal files and other data using any Internet connection, such as at a hotel business center or an Internet cafe. Sun's i-Planet is part of a wider race to make it easier to access complicated collections of corporate applications and data through simple, universal Web browsers. Several weeks ago, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced a way to let users send and receive corporate e-mail using a browser. International Business Machines Corp. also has ways to access corporate data via the Internet. Such Internet-access programs offer potentially large cost savings to corporate information-technology departments, since using the Internet instead of dial-up access eliminates the need to maintain large modem banks and cuts down on long-distance phone calls. It also makes it simpler to update software and hardware used by employees in remote locations, since most of the computing takes place on powerful central-network servers rather than users' PCs. Sun's i-Planet, expected to be available on May 19, runs on corporate-server machines and starts at $10,000 for as many as 100 computer users. It requires Web-browser software that supports Sun's Java programming technology. Sun said it has been using a version of i-Planet internally for nearly a year, and found it so popular that it decided to turn it into a commercial product. "The benefit is that you can go anywhere within Sun, as well as anywhere else, and have your desktop environment with you," said Stuart Wells, a senior vice president. In theory, such Internet interfaces eventually could signal trouble for PC makers, since one day it may become cheaper for companies to outfit their workers with simple Internet-based devices instead of complex PCs. While Mr. Wells said Sun's i-Planet isn't intended as an assault on the PC, he added that it should make it easier to access corporate data from a variety of Internet-enabled handheld devices, such as advanced cellular phones or personal organizers. Copyright (c) 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.