The Future's In Portability, Say Sun, eBay Execs

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March 14, 2001 (12:00 AM EST)

The Future's In Portability, Say Sun, eBay Execs

Los Angeles—Portable applications that supply services over the Internet to enterprise customers should be a key focus for solution providers this year, said George Paolini, Sun Microsystems vice president of technology evangelism and marketing, during his keynote speech at Internet World here Wednesday.

Paolini echoed a number of industry visionaries who have signaled the end of bulky applications that run off the desktop in favor of more flexible services available directly on the Internet.

"We are moving from a world [of] building big applications to [one of] providing componentized software," Paolini said. "That is a major shift in the way we construct and deliver software in the coming year."

Advocating the use of open standards along with Sun's Java and other development tools, Paolini demonstrated Sun's One Webtop, a Web-based application that allows mobile users to access Sun's StarOffice word-processing, spreadsheet, and other office applications remotely from any device. Only a small plug-in component lives on a user's system, while the majority of the software is maintained on a server.

The application is accessible by a number of different devices, from standard desktop PCs to Palm PCs and WAP-enabled phones, and each has its own custom user interface depending on the format.

Webtop, Paolini said, is an example of how a solution provider can "take the functionality of StarOffice Suite and use that to customize a service for [the] customer."

Paolini stressed the multiformat capabilities of his example, pointing to the growing importance of smaller portable devices for corporate users. "These devices compete with the PC in the enterprise," he said. "The point is to provide new points of access to your data."

In an earlier Internet World keynote speech Wednesday, Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay (stock: EBAY), also advocated portability. Whitman touted a recent eBay agreement with Microsoft (stock: MSFT) to support the new .Net initiative, giving the "Microsoft community of developers access [to eBay] APIs and developer tools." This is a way to push the online auctioneer's technology onto a number of new sites and, ultimately, increase auction sales, she said.

Whitman sees the agreement as a quick way to get the company's APIs into the hands of developers, but she stressed that the deal with Microsoft is not exclusive. She said eBay currently provides the APIs through its own developer program and could look into other solutions, such as Java, in the future.