Sun Microsystems Inc. officially threw its hat into the wireless Internet ring last week with a broad set of announcements unveiling a dedicated wireless organization within the company, launching new communications software and establishing a $100 million venture fund specifically for the wireless market.
Sun has always been a leader in the Internet infrastructure deployment space, either via its server hardware or various software solutions. Last week’s announcements show that Sun is looking to extend that leadership to the wireless Internet as well, placing itself at the center of the entire solution with products and software in wireless handsets, wireless carrier networks and in the wireless portal and other sites expected to be accessed by these devices and networks.
Central to this effort is the creation of the Wireless Business Unit, charged with directing the wireless strategy of Sun’s many operating divisions.
“One of the key messages is that we are putting together an end-to-end architecture for the wireless Internet,” said Subodh Bapat, chief technology officer of the new division. “Although we have been a major player in wireless before, this new unit will articulate that architecture, but it will not be the only organization at Sun focused on wireless, just like there’s not only one unit focused on IP.”
The new wireless unit is charged with defining Sun’s take on the wireless Internet evolution and catering to the needs of both carriers and infrastructure providers heading in that direction. To do so, Sun will create an end-to-end architecture for what it feels the wireless Internet will look like and bring that architecture to reality with the products and services made by the company’s other units and partner companies.
“The wireless group will be influencing, directing and architecting the future of these other business groups,” Bapat said.
Sun pointed to the new iPlanet Intelligent Communications Platform and increased momentum of its Java technology as examples of how the new unit will deliver solutions.
The iPlanet platform is an open, extensible software package designed to enable delivery of communication and collaboration services over converged voice, wireline and wireless networks.
It includes messaging, calendar, wireless and directory servers. According to Sun, the platform allows carriers to deliver existing services such as e-mail and calendar functions to multiple browser-enabled devices over an architecture capable of supporting future third-generation networks. It also supports intelligent notification services, delivery of customized and branded services to specific user communities and an interface into message routing processes.
The company said the adoption of the Java 2 platform Micro Edition, called J2ME, by the wireless industry further exemplifies the need for a more dedicated focus on wireless. Motorola Inc. this week introduced a developer support program specifically for wireless developers to create wireless handset applications using J2ME technology, which allows users to download applications from the Internet and therefore upgrade their wireless phones.
While these other units have developed and introduced several products and services for the wireless industry in the past, Sun felt too much attention had been given to the individual developments themselves and not enough to the big picture.
“It’s more of an end-to-end presence that hasn’t been recognized by the industry to date,” Bapat said.
Ann Wettersten, former vice president of business development and planning for Sun’s Network Service Provider division, was named vice president of the new group. She said the unit will host a global Wireless Excellence Center in Stockholm, Sweden, to open early next year. The center is charged with building, developing and implementing wireless solutions for carriers and for equipment and software vendors.
Sun also added a Wireless Service Provider Practice and a Java Pervasive Technologies Practice to its suite of customer training and support services, which also will be based in Stockholm.
Sun then announced an extension to its iForce Wireless Initiative to include more than 50 partners such as independent software vendors, application service providers, content providers and integrators. The goal of the initiative is to develop complete, end-to-end solutions for delivering m-commerce and enterprise application extension services incorporating Sun’s Solaris Operating Environment and Java technology.
Putting its money where its mouth is, Sun created a $100 million venture fund to invest in companies creating what if feels are innovative wireless technologies. Sun to date has made investments in such wireless firms as Everypath and Nuance, among others. The company singled out location services and streaming video as areas of particular interest.
Outside of the iPlanet platform, last week’s announcements lacked an emphasis on actual products to meet this vision. Warren Wilson, senior analyst at Summit Strategies, said he felt Sun is more concerned about staking out its intended area of play in the wireless Internet market for the long term.
“All the heavyweights are in the ring now,” he said, pointing to IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp. as other computing industry giants who recently made advancements in the wireless market. “The wireless opportunity is very significant and all are in there fighting for their shares of it. I don’t think anyone can actually handicap who the winner is at this stage. All you can do is point to their strengths and weaknesses and size it up that way.”
What Sun did last week was consolidate its strengths into a clear message.
“Sun brings a lot of separate strengths to the table,” Wilson said. “They realized they had certain elements of a good wireless story that if they pulled together certain pieces and added others they would be able to tell that story well.”
“Sun’s been relatively quiet on the wireless front,” he continued. “Between their strengths in the server market and their strengths in Java, if they added some business development and marketing to that, they’d have that good wireless story.”
Sun’s strengths are the popularity of both Java and Polaris, as well as the company’s traction with Web developers and telecom companies.
Also setting Sun apart is its much-touted arms-merchant approach, a philosophy under which Sun only sells all the equipment its customers need to run data centers and such, but will operate none itself, allowing the company to remain truly neutral. IBM and Microsoft, for instance, provide servers for data centers but also operate data centers of their own, somewhat in competition with their customers. Sun does not operate any data centers.
“Sun’s trying to center itself at the center of a wireless ecosystem here,” Wilson said. “If they do, the payoff is that pieces of a company can integrate and interact more easily with each other. The ecosystem concept is what Sun brings to the table.”
However Sun has weaknesses as well. First, it has entered the ring a little later than some other players. More telling, though, is a lack of wireless enablement middleware, featured by competitors IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.
“It’s not a complete wireless story yet, because they’ve not addressed the question of wireless enablement of existing enterprise applications. There’s nothing to compete with IBM’s WebSphere or Microsoft’s AirStream,” Wilson said.
However, the announcements “give Sun the basis on which they may add going forward,” concluded Wilson. “There are a lot of questions companies have to ask themselves and what Sun is doing to help answer those questions.”
