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Sun's Shiny New Object

Meet Joe, a universal messaging widget that eases development 0f globally distributed apps. The Web will never be the same.
By Rich Levin and Mary Hayes
Issue date: March 25, 1996

Standards in the object technology market are like the weather in Florida: If you don't like what's happening, wait half an hour; it'll probably change. March 26 will see object technology's version of a hurricane. Sun Microsystems, the hard-charging workstation vendor, is set to spring an object technology that could legitimize the World Wide Web as a platform for globally distributed enterprise applications.

Sun's product, named Joe, will be a universal messaging widget that will make developing globally distributed apps as easy as adding three lines of Java code. "It's pretty clear that the whole Internet-Web-Java-everything has changed the landscape dramatically," says Brian Croll, director of object marketing at Sun's SunSoft division in Mountain View, Calif. "This is a way to let Java applications talk to applications and objects somewhere else on the network. It allows you to take a business application and front-end it with a Java applet running in a Web page."

Joe is an object request broker, software that enables other programs to work together over a network, with each program solving a different part of a business problem. SunSoft will show how Joe connects Java-enabled Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator to virtually any b ack-end corporate application that supports the Object Management Group's Corba (common object request broker architecture) messaging standard.

For the OMG, that's a big win. Indeed, Joe could jump-start third-party development of Corba-compliant objects. "Joe is a communications mechanism entirely based on the Corba standards from OMG," says SunSoft's Croll. "That's exactly why we're pretty high on this product."

Joe will make Corba the de facto standard for Java back-end servers. "The Java application developer can access those Corba objects on the network by adding only three lines of code-just three Java calls," says Croll. "They don't have to learn any Corba-and you have a universal client talking to a universal back end."

The March 26 demonstration will feature what SunSoft says are the Internet's first fully interactive Web programs. One segment will feature a Web-based retirement planning application that Vanguard Mutual Funds is bui lding. "Joe allows us to leverage the power of our existing systems to deliver our services over the Web much more quickly and without reinventing the wheel," says David Stoltzfus, principal for advanced technology at the Vanguard Group in Valley Forge, Pa. As with Java, Joe will be compatible with virtually any Web browser that supports the Java Virtual Machine, including Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's forthcoming Internet Explorer 3.0. Joe will be distributed free over the World Wide Web. Java and Joe position Sun as the first viable competitor to Microsoft's OLE object architecture and ActiveX, its new Internet initiative. "Until this point, in terms of market share, OLE, through VBXs and OCXs, has completely dominated," says Evan Quinn, an object technology analyst at International Data Corp., a consulting firm in Framingham, Mass. "Nothing else comes close."

Battle For Acceptance
While Corba alternatives such as OpenDoc are technologically superior to ActiveX's controls, they continue to fight for market acceptance. Providing the growing legions of Java programmers with a standard, easy-to-use remote object messaging widget could be the solution Corba supporters have waited for. A flood of useful components that operate autonomously over the Internet and intranets could result. "It has the potential for more market pervasiveness," Quinn notes. "That's where [OMG's] opportunity lies." Users are seeking order in the chaos. "If you look at the object marketplace, it's clearly fragmented," says Sterling Stoudenmire, director of client-server strategies at Arthur Andersen Business Consulting in Chicago. "For me, as a developer, it's a nightmare."

What confuses users most is the on-again, off-again relationships the object technology market has created. Take, for example, Sun CEO's very visible partnership with Steve Jobs of Next Software Inc. (formerly Next Computer). Next was a key partner in Sun's object devel opment strategy, but it appears that Sun has given Next's once highly touted OpenStep object-based development environment a back seat to its own Java-based strategy.

In fact, sources familiar with the Sun/Next partnership say Sun may drop plans to sell an OpenStep-based visual development environment running on its Solaris operating system, which is set for release in June. "We have every intention of making sure customers get access [to OpenStep]," says one Sun source. "That doesn't mean Sun has to provide it." Three years ago, Sun licensed Next's OpenStep technology, a platform-independent object development environment. Sun wanted to incorporate OpenStep into its ambitious distributed object environment strategy, called Neo. Now Sun appears more interested in another platform-independent environment: the Internet. A Sun source says that even though the company has paid "tens of millions of dollars" to Next in licensing and support costs, the company is wondering wh ether it makes sense to continue on its OpenStep path now that it has Java and Joe.

A decision by Sun to back away from OpenStep could be bad news for Next and some users. "It's critically important, especially in the financial industry, that [Next achieve parity] on both [Solaris and Windows NT]," says John Galante, a first VP at brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York.
If OpenStep on Solaris falters, Galante will have to decide between using NT-based computers or Sun, an all-or-nothing decision he'd rather not make. "It will not leave a lot of financial industry executives with a good taste in their mouth regarding Next," he says.

That waxing and waning is one reason why Microsoft's object technology has the upper hand. "[ActiveX] is the safe bet in the medium term," says Andersen's Stoudenmire. But Sun's Joe initiative has several advantages, not the least of which is the incredible momentum behind the Java programming language. "Sun has to c opy the Microsoft model," says IDC's Quinn. "They have to put Joe out on the street, and try to create some kind of momentum to offset the Microsoft [OLE] standard. The question is, is it too late or too little?"

Sun hopes the combination of Joe and Corba will create an object force to be reckoned with.

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