While one of the results of the Sun/Microsoft agreement will surely be a growing variety of interoperable solutions, customers needn't wait for those fruits to ripen if interoperability figures prominently in their IT planning. Sun is already in the business and has available an impressive list of market-ready interoperable solutions.

For example, Sun has a number of reference architectures that integrate Sun products with third-party software:

• Reference Architecture for Retail Banking (with Infosys)
• Reference Architecture for Business Intelligence (with Hyperion)
• Reference Architecture for Digital Asset Management (with Artesia and Virage)
• Reference Architecture for Data Warehousing (with Sybase IQ)

Another solution, one that is even now interoperable with Microsoft Outlook (and Netscape, MozillaTM and Evolution), is the SunTM Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise Messaging Consolidation. Used in combination with the Sun JavaTM System Connector for Microsoft Outlook, the Sun enterprise messaging solution enables users to keep Microsoft Outlook as a full-featured client on a Windows desktop with the Sun JavaTM Enterprise System, while completely replacing Microsft Exchange on the back-end.

As an alternative, then, to simultaneous upgrades of Exchange, Windows 2003 and the current version of Active Directory, many clients are opting for the more cost-effective Sun solution that allows employees to retain the familiar client interface of Microsoft Outlook and simultaneously improve the messaging performance of their IT infrastructure.

For those enterprises with heterogeneous environments that run several directory services simultaneously, using the Sun JavaTM System Identity Synchronization for Windows (IdSync) allows the use of synchronized bidirectional password values that require only a single update whenever periodic password updates are required.

The Sun JavaTM System Portal Server software can deliver Microsoft documents and applications across multiple channels and devices. The solution can also display Microsoft documents, serve Active Server Pages (ASPs), and do multi-channel delivery to Microsoft devices (PCs, Tablet or Pocket PCs), run on Windows, and support Microsoft Explorer and Microsoft Outlook Web Access. Extensible through the SOAP framework, it enables full-featured, bi-directional access to Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and 2000 without using an external Web client like Outlook Web Access.

Other Sun solutions that currently offer interoperability with Microsoft products:

• Sun JavaTM Studio allows developers to create Web Services that can simply communicate with the .Net environment through HTTP, XML, SOAP and WSDL.

• Sun N1TM Grid products can automate the provisioning of Microsoft servers, deploy applications and COM/COM+ services onto them, and track changes and report diagnostics on those servers, whether local or remote.

• Sun JavaTM Desktop System, Sun RayTM ultra-thin clients and StarOfficeTM productivity suite offer seamless interoperability with Microsoft formats.

So, interoperability is here. And more solutions are on the way. [...read more...]

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter