Tuesday June 28, 2005

JavaOne News - Sun's Next Move in Software History has a cadence. At one point, web servers were not just a product, but an industry. But they quickly became commonplace, and the industry found value in “upstack” technology around application servers. They spawned an entire industry, including the emergence of companies like JBoss and BEA. Many application servers have become readily available, and, like their web server predecessors, free and open source.

So our announcement yesterday to open source our implementation of our next generation application server (Java System Application Server 9) was the obvious next step. Why? Because giving access to technology, and the ability to shape that technology's direction is an opportunity for the Java community to participate, vs. just witness the future. I firmly believe that open sourcing our application server will encourage developers across the Java ecosystem to contribute their insight, creativity and expertise. And here's your invitation. The water's warm, feel free to jump in. The url is: Glassfish. I can't wait to see the results.

But wait, there's more. Just as web servers gave way to application servers, app servers are now giving ground to the next level in the stack: service oriented architectures (SOAs), integration, composite applications, etc. That's why some two years ago we initiated an effort to develop an open specification to provide a standard way to deliver business integration of Java (and non-Java) services. That spec is now published. Further, Sun has open sourced it's implementation of this specification and made it freely available, also as open source. The goal: We want to do for integration what J2EE did for application development.

So by the end of the first day at JavaOne, most of the folks I spoke with understood the motivation for our app server and business integration open source moves. But the question remained: how will you fill the gap in what happens above the app server and monetize this opportunity? Good question. Answer: this morning, we announced that we intend to acquire SeeBeyond, one of the leading providers of business integration software solutions seebeyond.

Today's acquisition is critical to our Solaris and Java Enterprise System strategy. With SeeBeyond suite of 9 well-integrated products, we have an offering that positions us to monetize our investments in Java and Sun's Java Enterprise System and propel us into a leadership position in the next big wave of IT spend. SeeBeyond fits architecturally and they share our vision for adhering to open standards. Their suite is already based on open specifications, including J2EE, JMS, SOAP, WSDL, XML and NetBeans.

Will history repeat itself? I think so. Just as the acquisition of Waveset catapulted Sun into a position as one of the leaders in the Identity Management market identity, I believe the acquisition of SeeBeyond will catapult us into the lead in Enterprise Platform Suites, SOA and composite application delivery. We intend to aggressively tackle this $5 Billion market with both guns-a-blazing.

It's a beautiful day in the Java neighborhood.

Safe-Harbor

John Loiacano's blog contains projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future products and services, opportunities, results or financial performance of Sun Microsystems, Inc., including statements regarding Sun's intention to acquire SeeBeyond, that today's acquisition is critical to our Solaris and Java Enterprise System strategy, that with SeeBeyond's suite of 9 well-integrated products, we have an offering that positions us to monetize our investments in Java and Sun's Java Enterprise System and propel us into a leadership position in the next big wave of IT spend; that SeeBeyond fits architecturally and they share our vision for adhering to open standards, Sun's belief that the acquisition of SeeBeyond will catapult us into the lead in Enterprise Platform suites, SOA and composite application delivery and that we intend to aggressively tackle this $5 Billion market with guns-a-blazing. Such statements are just predictions and involve risks and uncertainties such that actual results and performance may differ materially. Factors that might cause such a difference include the risks associated with the failure to consummate the acquisition of SeeBeyond, the failure to successfully integrate SeeBeyond and its products into Sun and achieve expected results, failure to compete successfully in this highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, and the failure to retain key employees. These and other risks are detailed from time to time in Sun's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Sun's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2004 and its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended September 26, 2004, December 26, 2004 and March 27, 2005.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

SeeBeyond has agreed to file a proxy statement in connection with the proposed acquisition. The proxy statement will be mailed to the stockholders of SeeBeyond. SeeBeyond's stockholders are urged to read the proxy statement and other relevant materials when they become available because they will contain important information about the acquisition and SeeBeyond. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of these documents (when they are available) and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") at the SEC's web site at SEC. In addition, investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the documents filed with the SEC by SeeBeyond by going to SeeBeyond's Investor Relations page on its corporate website at seebeyond.

In addition, SeeBeyond and its officers and directors may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from SeeBeyond's stockholders with respect to the acquisition. A description of any interests that SeeBeyond's officers and directors have in the acquisition will be available in the proxy statement. In addition, Sun may be deemed to be participating in the solicitation of proxies from SeeBeyond's stockholders in favor of the approval of the acquisition. Information concerning Sun's directors and executive officers is set forth in Sun's proxy statement for its 2004 annual meeting of stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on September 22, 2004, and annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on September 13, 2004. These documents are available free of charge at the SEC's web site at SECor by going to Sun's Investor Relations page on its corporate website at Sun Corporate.


Posted by johnnyl ( Jun 28 2005, 03:48:02 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Tuesday June 14, 2005

Blog Kick Off and OpenSolaris Change happens and communication happens, and all in real time. No more waiting for a magazine or a regularly scheduled email newsletter to arrive to find out what is happening in the industry or, in my case, what's happening with software at Sun.

The simple truth is that the fastest and easiest way to communicate a viewpoint directly to a customer, potential customer, partner or press, is through a blog. And so, here is my debut. As Executive Vice President of software at Sun, I'm involved in setting the agenda for what Sun is doing in software in this quickly evolving industry. Expect to see my opinions on the changes and opportunities I see on a regular basis.

And what better a day to kick off a blog than the official unveiling of OpenSolaris, a worldwide event initiated by all those with a common interest of using and improving one of the world's most advanced operating environments. The primary medium, blogs of course.

Prior to running all of software at Sun, my role was running the operating platforms group, home of the Solaris Operating System. I often get the question "when did we decide to open source Solaris," seen by many as the crown jewels of Sun's systems software? What was the tipping point to the decision? In fact, it was a steady evolution. There was talk as far back as the mid- to late nineties about open sourcing Solaris. About three years ago we committed to deliver Solaris 10 on the SPARC, Xeon and Opteron 64-bit platforms on the same day, with the same feature set, and, committed to open source it via an OSI-approved license. The majority of heavy lifting occurred more recently as we continued work at eliminating technical and legal encumbrances and preparing the code for broad availability  (including free availability of the corresponding optimized compilers and debuggers).  Sifting through literally millions of lines of Solaris code was extremely challenging, and time consuming. One of our key criteria all along was to offer a full, buildable source base, not just offer a few components. It took us longer than we wanted, but we're finally here with Phase I.

Developers and enterprises often want the open source code so they know they are not locked into a single proprietary technology. We think that for them, the primary "good" from open source comes from the freedom it gives them. "Free" is nice. "Freedom" from being locked in is even better. So we may not even see a lot of contribution to the code back from the large enterprises. That's OK. Developers, on the other hand, really are seeking a community of smart, committed people - with common interests and capabilities - with whom to interact. And they want free, unencumbered access to the best technology. OpenSolaris provides the opportunity to leverage a stunningly compelling technology, and make it even better. We expect an extraordinary group of developers to add value back to the common code, and build new businesses on top of it.

So there was no tipping point moment. Just an awareness of the trend line and the realization that open source is the methodology of this massively connected era. That, combined with Sun's genetic predisposition to open sourcing (everything from NFS to NetBeans to OpenOffice.org, etc.)  made this the obvious next step for Sun. And for those of you who thought there were only a couple of alternative operating systems for your "industry standard" x86 hardware, we give you another choice. Open. Free. So use it, enjoy it, tell me what you think of it - and what you think of our decision to open source it. Let's begin that conversation. As for Phase I: Mission accomplished. Now on to Phase II! Stay tuned.
Posted by johnnyl ( Jun 14 2005, 01:13:41 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [8]