As promised at the SunNetwork Conference in San Francisco, Sun is
attacking cost and complexity with new products. The benefits of their
R & D budget were unveiled in the form of new servers, a new workstation,
new Sun N1 technologies and more.
At the SunNetwork Conference 2003, Jonathan Schwartz, executive
vice president, Software at Sun, announced Sun's Java Enterprise System
and its pricing model. The price of the Java Enterprise System (formerly Project Orion) is $100
per employee per year, including support and unlimited right to use
(RTU). It seamlessly integrates enterprise network components needed
for Web Services.
As part of Sun's initiative to offer customers a complete system that
allows for the rapid deployment of services, Sun has introduced new
enhanced components with its new Java Enterprise System. New
capabilities range from network identity services to portal,
communications, security services and an integrated Java Web services
platform.
A description and commentary on Sun CEO Scott McNealy's opening keynote
speech at the SunNetwork Conference 2003 is provided by Janice
Heiss on Sun's Java technology Web page. Some of the main topics
McNealy focused included the debut of the Java Desktop System,
formerly called project Mad Hatter, and Sun's new mobility with
security strategy.
Sun EVP of software, Jonathan Schwartz, in his keynote at the
SunNetwork Conference 2003, talked about how Sun will deliver
upgrades once a quarter, how its licensing agreement will only be three
pages instead of a tome, and how its low price combined with these
factors will create a revolution in how people think about, deploy and
purchase server software. He demonstrated the Java Enterprise System
live on stage.
Users in the market for a desktop solution that features an office
productivity suite (StarOffice 7.0 Office Suite), the latest
release of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE), an
updated Sun Ray appliance, the Mozilla browser, as well as email,
calendaring and instant messaging applications will find all of these
in the Java Desktop System (formerly known as Mad Hatter).
The newly announced Java Studio Enterprise solution gives users the
development tools, services and support needed for creating and testing
applications for the Java Enterprise System: a fast, full-feature Java
IDE, Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) tools and wizards, Web
service creation and assembly tools, portal channel builder,
integration connector builder and one-button deploy tools for
application and Web servers.
As part of the NC 03 Q3 launch, Sun introduced three systems based on
the UltraSPARC processor and the Solaris Operating System
(Solaris OS) that are priced aggressively and designed to provide
leading price-performance over competitive offerings from Dell, HP and
IBM. Sun also made enhancements to the Sun Ray Thin Clients and cited
benchmarks for performance increases on certain servers.
Sun continues its campaign to reduce the complexity of network computing with
the introduction of eight new reference architectures and an Infrastructure
Solution for Grid Computing.
Sun continues to push its N1 initiative forward with the expansion of
partnerships, the availability of N1 technologies in iForce Solution
Centers worldwide, an N1 Early Deployment Program and the N1 Center of
Excellence which provides dedicated N1 consulting expertise. Sun has
also added Sun N1 CenterRun to its N1 family.
Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer, and David Yen, the
EVP of Processor and Network products, spoke at the SunNetwork
Conference 2003 about advances in chip design and how Sun will create a
new system based on them.
The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) has a new member in Sun Microsystems,
which has just joined as a Promoter Member. TCG, an open, industry
standards body made up of computer and device manufacturers, software
vendors and other stakeholders in the effort to enhance the security of
interoperable computing environments, will benefit from Sun's
commitment to secure computing.
Sun has bolstered its commitment to the enterprise Auto-ID initiative
by creating an Auto-ID Business Unit and naming Julie Sarbacker its
director. A member for over three years of the Auto-ID Center, Sun has
the experience to deliver the standards-based technology enterprises
will need to link their operations to the Electronic Product Code (EPC)
Network.
Quarter-to-quarter (Q/Q), Sun outperformed the overall UNIX server
market in both unit and vendor revenue growth, and maintained its
position as the worldwide leader in both categories, according to the
2Q03 Worldwide Server Database by Gartner Dataquest.
Some of the key Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who are providing
advanced systems integration support with the Java Enterprise System
include SeeBeyond, Sybase, TIBCO, Vitria and webMethods. The Java
Enterprise System was announced at the SunNetwork Conference 2003
as a software system that delivers a set of enterprise network
services.
The iForce Partner Program will deliver product development and
go-to-market initiatives for the Sun Java Desktop System (announced at
the SunNetwork Conference 2003). ISVs can get the technology,
engineering, marketing support and a self-certification process so they
can build and deploy their applications on the Java Desktop System.
Sun and Bank One will collaborate on a mass market delivery of Bank
One's high-volume electronic payment application to combat the problems
of viruses and to keep financial data secure. The solution from Sun and
Bank One runs on Sun's SPARC processor-based servers and secure Web
infrastructure consisting of the Trusted Solaris Operating System
and Sun ONE Web Servers and Sun ONE Proxy Servers (formerly
iPlanet products).
Recognizing the need for an open-systems approach to TV services in the
TV-capable broadband service market, Sun, in association with over 35
partners, has created the iForce TV Services network. The group
aims to assist customers in deploying multi-service television
solutions over broadband networks.
The CTO of Sun Software, John Fowler, recently answered a few questions
on topics relating to digital rights management (DRM) and Microsoft's
recent inclusion of DRM capabilities into its Microsoft Office 2003.
Cypress Semiconductor, a broadline semiconductor supplier with a
communications focus, recently deployed a planning system from i2
Technologies and Sun to streamline business processes. The system is
already returning significant benefits in the form of long range
planning and detailed forecasting. Cypress plans to automate the
fulfillment of orders in the near future, completing their end-to-end
model of the business.
Between them, the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and Trusted
Solaris Operating System cover the entire gamut of security requirements for
corporate IT systems, ranging from protection against exploitation of
vulnerabilities in productivity applications to the need for data
separation or for safeguarding privileged information or complying with
governmental regulations that mandate extraordinary security
provisions.
Tune in for the Sun Net Talk "N1 in Action: Application Provisioning
Takes Center Stage" to be held Wednesday, September 24, 2003, from 9:00
a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT (12:00 - 1:00 p.m. ET). Host Yael Zheng, Senior
Director, N1 Marketing, will lead Ed Turner, Architecture Manager,
and Charlie Boyle, N1 Business Development Manager, in a discussion of
the next phase in the evolution of N1, Sun's revolutionary architecture
for managing entire network computing systems.
The Montreal Java User Group will present an opportunity to
discover how LiDO provides easy and efficient access to Enterprise data
sources from your Java technology applications. Presenting at the
meeting will be Softworx Technology Group, the Canadian distributor of
LiBeLIS, Liberty for large Information Systems, which delivers Java
technologies focused on highly scalable transactional systems. The meeting is free.
Two events will be held in conjunction with IEEE Visualization 2003
conference: InfoVis 2003, the ninth annual IEEE Symposium on
Information Visualization, and PVG 2003, the IEEE Symposium on Parallel
and Large-DataVisualization and Graphics (PVG). Sponsors for both these
events include Sun, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, SGI, Kitware and
others.
The Sun Rack 900 can now be purchased with the Power Distribution
System (PDS) installed and ordered with one part number. A newly
available water-tight Power Cable Kit connects the PDS input panel with
facility power, providing greater protection against the possibility of
water entering the facility connector set. The rack comes with a
vertical cable management bracket installed in each rack.
The guide covers System Management Services (SMS) software, differences between the software on the Sun Fire 15K/12K Servers and the Sun Enterprise 10K server, Dynamic Reconfiguration Software and Sun Management Center Software.
Red Hat Inc. has joined the ObjectWeb consortium, an organization
founded in 1999 to foster the development of open-source middleware.
Red Hat will bring a supporting commercial presence to the consortium's
open source middleware development efforts, including Java Open
Application Server (JOnAS).
The co-bundle of NetBeans IDE 3.5.1 (ML) and Java 2 Platform,
Standard Edition (J2SE) 1.4.2 is now available in English, Chinese
and Japanese. The NetBeans IDE 3.5.1 release contains bug fixes that
improve the IDE's handling of text when the IDE's default font size is
increased. Startup time and general UI responsiveness have been
improved.
Instructions for creating a file server are available on the Sun
BigAdmin Web site. The general guide, authored by Eric Rinker, is
geared towards the inexperienced system administrator and specifically
targets the UNIX operating system. The article leaves implementation
details up to the reader, focusing instead on system design.
A recent article by David Andrew, "Updating OpenBoot PROM for
Sun Workstations and Workgroup Servers Based on SPARC
Technology," attempts to guide readers through the steps
necessary to complete the update. Updating is useful for saving time
and preventing the problems associated with latent bugs that need to be
resolved.
Amy Rich reports in a BigAdmin services article on her experience
of installing what she refers to as a "semi-homogeneous" solution --
the Solaris 9 Operating System (Solaris OS) (x86 Platform
Edition) -- in a desktop/small server environment. The resulting
semi-homogeneity, she says, can help cut bottom-line costs for system
administration and development.
Configuration Engine, Version 11, and Interactive Selling Suite,
Version 11.0 from Firepond Inc. have completely new architectures
based on the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). These
products are part of Firepond's line-up of products that automate customer
service processes and simplify product configuration for manufacturers and
others.
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