Sun Launches Web Services Strategy

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February 05, 2001 (7:01 PM EST)

Sun Microsystems Inc. unveiled Monday its answer to archrival Microsoft Corp.'s .Net strategy for building, deploying, and accessing application services across the Web.

The Sun Open Net Environment, or Sun ONE, comprises the Java 2 enterprise platform, Sun's Forte development tools, and iPlanet software.

Scott McNealy, chairman and chief executive of the Palo Alto, Calif. company, said Sun ONE was about supplying a platform in which the complexity of the Internet is hidden from the user as he or she accesses services from any device in any location.

"The goal here is not to get you on the Internet, but to get you off the Internet and everything else [such as devices] on the Internet," McNealy told reporters and analysts gathered at the Sun ONE launch in San Francisco.

Analysts believe that the competition between Microsoft (stock: MSFT) and Sun (stock: SUNW) has moved from the Java platform and its threat to the Windows operating system to whether the enterprise will choose to build a Web services architecture on Windows or Unix, the former using Microsoft tools and the latter Java-based tools.

"We now have a war ... [and] the danger for the Unix folks is that this is a war Microsoft knows how to fight," an industry analyst said. "Unless the Java alliance rallies round J2EE and Web services, they can lose the mid-market that they were gaining in.

"Microsoft owns the low-end, small-to-medium enterprise market, but J2EE rules the high-end roost."

Absent from Monday's launch were Sun's J2EE partners, such as IBM (stock: IBM) and BEA Systems Inc. (stock: BEAS).

McNealy said the company's vision of Web services, which they called "smart services," was wrapped around the company's software and tools. Full delivery of the platform for Web services would be in the second half of 2002.

By the end of the year, Sun planned to deliver Forte for Java 4, an integrated development environment that would allow developers to build Enterprise JavaBeans, the component model for building server-side, enterprise applications in Java, with interfaces that support some Web services technology gaining industry support. Those technologies included XML, SOAP, and WSDL (Web services description language).

An interim release, Forte for Java 3, would be available in a couple of months, officials said.

Among the new technology introduced Monday was Sun ONE Webtop, Developer Release 1.0, a browser-based desktop for displaying Web services and productivity applications running on a server.

Also part of the architecture for Web services would be a number of products from iPlanet, also called the Sun-Netscape Alliance. Those products include the iPlanet Directory Server, Portal Server, Application Server, Web Server, communication, integration, and commerce servers.

Sun officials said a major difference between their Web services architecture and Microsoft's was the latter locked customers into its proprietary Active Directory and SQL Server database. McNealy claimed Sun's architecture comprises "open interface, non-proprietary components" that can be swapped with third-party products.

Typical of major Sun events, the company showed videos portraying Microsoft's PC-centric software as old and tired technology. During one scene, actors resembling Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and chief executive Steve Ballmer were grieving over a hospital bed where a dying PC was on life support.