Sun Microsystems Inc wheeled out 37 partners at its high profile launch of its new Jini distributed computing technology in San Francisco yesterday – and contrasted that with the one partner – Netscape Communications Corp – it had managed to sign up before the launch of Java three years ago. The list included consumer goods manufacturers such as Bosch Siemens, Ericsson NV, Kodak Corp, Philips Electronics NV, Sharp Corp, Sony Corp and Symbian Ltd, as well as hardware and peripheral makers such as Groupe Bull, Epson Corp, IBM Corp and Seagate Technologies Inc, and software developers such as Computer Associates International Inc, Inprise Corp and Novell Inc. Jini is Sun’s attempt to provide ubiquitous technology to underpin what it calls simple, spontaneous networking of disparate consumer and enterprise devices. It may well turn out, claimed Sun CEO Scott McNealy, to be the most compelling reason for writing in Java. Although Sun had paved the way with the announcement last week that it was working with consumer giants Sony and Philips to provide a bridge between Jini and the HAVi Home Audio-Video interorperability standard (CI No 3,580), it was still something of a surprise that Sun focused so heavily on consumer-oriented applications for Jini at the expense of its traditional enterprise networking market. That’s partly because some of the enterprise features of Jini aren’t yet ready, including key security features and the widely heralded JavaSpaces technology, still three to six months out. Still, Sun says the first Jini products will hit the market by the end of this year, and it predicts that by this time next year the Jini logo will be pervasive. Personal computer technology was nowhere to be seen during the presentations, and McNealy claimed that Jini would be an inflection point where the service provider and the network become the central elements. The PC is not the center of the universe he said, claiming that the new model was not a client-server, but an appliance-services computing model. Jini consists of just 35,000 lines of Java code, and currently consists of three main elements: the JCP Jini Technology Core Platform, the JXP Jini Technology Extended Platform and the JSK Jini Software Kit, all downloadable from the Sun website along with the specifications. There is also the TCK Core Platform Compatibility Kit, and an evaluation binary for JavaSpaces. Jini uses Sun’s Java Remote Method Invocation protocols to move code around the network so that devices don’t need to have numerous device drivers pre-installed in order to interoperate with other devices or services. Jini devices and applications use a process known as discovery to register with a network, and once registered, the device is placed in the Jini lookup service, equivalent to a bulletin board for all network services. The lookup stores both pointers to the services, and also code in the form of objects. When the client wants to use a device – say a printer – the driver and driver interface get downloaded from the lookup to the client. Sun’s Lookup Service is described as a dynamic directory. Novell Inc is one of the licensees, and plans to add the dynamic capabilities to its static Novell Directory Services, something else that might make Jini more attractive to large-scale enterprise applications.
Making money
Will Sun make money out of Jini? It’s the same question people were asking about Java three years ago. Sun says it does have plans to introduce Jini-enabled devices through its recently formed Consumer Embedded Division, and also plans to incorporate it within its own workstations and servers. It’s even considering offering Jini services, and has already used the technology within its StoreX storage initiative. But Sun is currently positioning the Jini launch as an industry announcement, and is at pains to point out that the technology has been left as open as possible, with plenty of room for third party industry innovation. CEO Scott McNealy said that Jini could open up huge opportunities. Developers, he said, should from now on write applications so that service providers would be able to offer the functionality as services over the network. Telephone, cable and network providers could all add network services to the products using Jini, he said. Stung by recent criticisms and rebel breakaway groups dissatisfied with Java licensing restrictions, Sun has worked carefully on a new community source license model for Jini, full details of which are detailed on its web site. It’s similar to the open source model, with the difference that Sun will require compatibility, enforced through testing. Proprietary enhancements will be allowed and need not be fed back to the core source code, so long as compatibility is maintained. Source code is free, but Sun will charge for the Jini compatibility logo, using a reasonable fee structure that is based on commercial projections. Full details, tomorrow.
