TT: What, exactly, is Sun One?
Phipps: Sun One is the architecture to deliver smart Web services over the Internet in the future -- today's Web services (e-mail, etc) with context added. It is a Web service that is able to benefit from the context of your location, your calendar, your finances and other information about you to deliver you the right information rather than just give you the ability to browse. It is a smart service.
TT: I'm not sure I get it, could you explain further?
Phipps: Actually, there are three questions you should ask me: What is a Web service? What is a smart Web service? And what is Sun One?
TT: That's a very Smart service right there, a Smart interview, I appreciate that.
Phipps: (laughing) Exactly, I try to take your context into account and deliver you just the information you need.
Now, what is a Web service? Information or a transaction you need delivered to you over the Web. Everyone's doing that, that's the flavor du jour.
What is a smart Web service? It is a Web service that is able to benefit from the context of your location, your calendar, your finances and other information about you to deliver you the right information at the right time and space.
What is Sun One? Sun One is Sun's architecture for starting today with a view to provide Smart Web services tomorrow. Sun One itself consists of tools, a platform, a service container, delivery to any device, contextual information and the service application itself -- and these include integration with existing systems and legacy and delivery to multiple networks.
Key words for this are: context, multi-net, `I want to be able get my smart service through a Web browser at a workstation,' `I want to get it through a cell phone,' `I want to get it through a PDA' [personal digital assistant] and `I want to get it through voice prompt in my car.'
Smart services are Web services with context added.
TT: Is Sun One more of a software engineer's tool or a user's tool?
Phipps: It's on the same level as Sun's statement: `The network is the computer.' It's a guiding philosophy for both engineers and business people. For engineers, it says open standards are the key to success in the future. The future is going to be massively interconnected and in a massively interconnected world, it's pointless to try to do anything other than open standards.
The best way to think about the Sun One architecture at the moment is it is a positioning guide for standards and product implementation.
It will help select the products and standards that are going to positively contribute to your future instead of run you into a dead end.
I don't know if this is an issue in Taiwan or not, but it certainly is in other places.
Companies try to buy products that are easy to get started with without thinking about what the consequences are if they succeed. People who usually do succeed are those who use scalable, open products because that's what successful companies need.
The right thing to do is to plan for the future when they succeed and plan for it by using open standards and interoperable technologies.
TT: What programming tools and Web software `products' do you already have available today?
Phipps: We already have iPlanet and its suite of services [Internet software], and Forte for Java, community edition, and Forte for Java Internet edition [programming tools].
RSS