SUN TOUTS MICROSOFT ALLIANCE

Sun Microsystems used its quarterly Network Computing event last week in Shanghai to introduce several products and innovations, including a new carrier-grade Netra server and new identity management solutions based on grid technology. The company also reiterated its commitment to keeping the peace with Microsoft after the two rivals signed a 10-year cooperation agreement last month.

“The IT industry is about to undergo a fundamental shift as customers stop paying for hardware and software, and instead start subscribing to systems and the services they deliver,” said Jonathan Schwartz, chief operating officer at Sun.

To help facilitate that shift, Sun developed its new Netra 440 server to be carrier-grade. However, the company is selling it at a price point that David Yen, executive vice president of Sun's newly formed Scalable Systems Group, said is 43% to 75% lower than HP's PA-RISC servers. The Netra 440 starts at $13,995.

Along with the Netra 440, which uses four UltraSPARC IIIi processors and runs the Solaris operating system, Sun introduced a family of NEBS-compliant storage arrays for carriers.

“Java technology and Java Enterprise servers are revolutionizing development in the telco market by providing a common language for servers and devices on a common set of middleware and a carrier-grade application server environment,” Yen said.

Sun plans to focus on winning a good portion of what analyst firm IDC projects will be a $4 billion identity management market by 2007. To that end, the company introduced three new identity management products — Java System Identity Manager, Java System Access Manager and Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition — as well as new alliances in the space. The Identity Manager combines user provisioning and meta-directory capabilities for managing identity permissions and profiles, which Sun claimed to be a market first.

The Access Manager aids in the management of secure access to internal and external Web-based resources. The Directory Server Enterprise Edition is a central repository for storing enterprise identity information. It includes load balancing, fail-over capabilities, security and integration with Microsoft Active Directory.

Sun also announced alliances with Deloitte & Touche and PricewaterhouseCoopers to design and deploy identity management solutions. However, its new 10-year collaboration agreement with Microsoft could help set the pace for identity management and other IT innovations.

That agreement includes technical collaboration, which will give the companies access to certain aspects of each other's server technology to build interoperable software products. It also includes Sun licensing Windows' communications protocols, Microsoft's continued support of the Java Virtual Machine, Windows certification for Sun's Xeon servers and collaboration for improved interoperability between Java and .Net technologies.

“It's a very comprehensive agreement that involves putting aside and settling a number of legal issues that have been between the companies,” said Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer for Sun.

However, the most productive part of the agreement may be the promise to make each other's technologies interoperate better. “There already is a lot of interoperating that happens between Sun and Microsoft products,” Papadopoulos said. “But the real question is if there are complexities of that interoperability that are gratuitous. Are there easier ways to get products to work together?”

Microsoft and Sun are similar in that they value IT innovation, he said, but they diverge on process. “We do this differently,” Papadopoulos said. “But we want to make sure we get the maximum expression of that innovation to the market [and that] we aren't depriving customers from extracting that innovation because of really stupid things we have done in the marketplace.”

Despite Sun's new initiatives, analyst firm First Albany maintained a neutral rating on the company. In a report issued the day after Sun's event, First Albany wrote: “The newly announced initiatives reflect a focus on generating sustainable revenue levels to leverage past development costs.” However, the firm expressed concern about Sun's ability to generate volumes to profitably support the R&D efforts and fixed investments.