And that pretty much was the mood at the Sun Developer Conference in Bangalore last month. A bit belligerent. But not too much. A little defensive, but not overtly so. And just a little bit conflicted—deep belief in a breathtakingly grandiose long-term vision and some uncertainty on what its short-term strategies should be.

But first the vision. Matt Thompson, chief technology evangelist, says—"People accuse us of getting to the Web services model late. That’s true. But that was because we believe Web services is only a phase. If you look at what our competitors are doing, it’s essentially a client-server architecture with a Web base. We believe that there’s something next."

That "next" is derived out of Metcalfe’s Law, which, in many ways, is to networks what Moore’s Law is to microprocessors.

Briefly, it states that the usefulness or utility of a network equals the square of the number of users. Sun, therefore, is looking beyond Web services to an "Internet of Things", says Thompson. "Our mission," he told developers, "is to connect everything with a digital heartbeat to the Net and to help you make money while doing that."

It’s not a new idea. Research projects at MIT have been working toward the same idea for years. Consumer goods vendors like LG are already shipping refrigerators that are Internet-ready. Automakers have been talking of connectivity in cars for a while and are likely to deliver on that within the next couple of years. Sun sees a major role for itself in all of that. "Network identity, mobility and security are going to be the key drivers," says Thompson.

The promise
The company told developers it was making what it called ‘Five Big Bets’. Bet I: its N1 (Network One) promise for data centers on the policy of "wire once, provision for ever". N1 is Sun’s vision of virtualization of the data center through a software that will act like a network OS of sorts and will allocate resources for optimal utilization.

Bet II: The application server will get integrated into the OS. Sun recently released plans for what

Would you like to work on the .NET platform in the next two years?

it calls ‘Project Orion’, which promises to deliver its entire software as one gigantic version of its Solaris operating system. It will initially include all the SunONE (Open Network Environment) elements, including the directory server, application server, portal, messaging and provisioning software, and will later expand to include storage management software. A version of Orion for Linux is also on the cards.

Bets III & IV: Mobility and Security that will make Java and XML the de facto standards. According to Thompson, "72% of all wireless devices on the client site already run on Java and XML." Certainly, J2ME has been a success with cellphone vendors (notably Nokia and Motorola), and, according to one estimate, 65 million cellular handsets in the market today are embedded with Java applications.

Bet V: Project Liberty.

In the long run, who do you see Linux as a greater threat to?

The problem
There’re many. For one, N1 will take at least two-to-three years to deliver and questions are being asked on whether Sun has that kind of time. For another, if N1 works and increases utilization by 85%, it will hurt Sun server sales—an issue McNealy acknowledges...but says he will cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Besides, Sun, in its reinvention from a hardware company to a systems company, is betting hard on software—with half of its huge R&D budget allocated to it. At the same time, it promises that software will cost little or next to nothing. The bet—software and Project Orion will drive hardware sales. It’s a dicey bet to make.

And then there’s the desktop and Linux. In a project interestingly named Mad Hatter (from the guy who wouldn’t speak a straight sentence in Alice in Wonderland), Sun will deliver (in spring this year) a beta version of a Linux desktop. A fatter version of the thin client idea, it is meant for enterprise customers who don’t need a general purpose PC.

Will Sun’s support to Linux and open source affect Solaris?

Divided on Linux
However, Sun’s ‘Linux on Desktop’ initiative has often sounded like a tactic to divert attention from the Linux on server successes. It got into Linux late and when it did, has see-sawed between praising it to high heavens and dismissing it as "irrelevant". McNealy told a gathering of CEOs and developers at the conference—"I really see no reason why anyone would want to move to Linux at data centers. Our customers want a solid, secure OS there and they are unlikely to budge from Solaris." Adds Thompson—"We may sound a bit conflicted. We had discussions on this internally. In the areas that we are looking at, call centers and back-office operations, Mad Hatter is going to be a really good proposition."

Linux vendors like Red Hat and SuSe, on the other hand, are believed to be not too happy with what they see as Sun’s dismissive approach. The fact that Red Hat and SuSe (with its United Linux initiative) are competitors, makes that dialogue more interesting.

Something that Thompson said sums up Sun’s whole view of Linux very neatly. "We believe in Solaris. Linux is a customer-driven initiative."

Sarita Rani

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