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Sun's Role in the Java World
Sun software chief Jonathan Schwartz assesses Sun's strategy and how Java fits into it.
Interview by Steve Gillmor
JavaOne, June 12, 2003
Java is different things to different people—a language, a platform, a community. To Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president of software, it is the core of the company's competitive software strategy. Java Pro caught up with Schwartz before JavaOne to learn how Java plays into Sun's strategies for integration, Web services, and Project Orion.
Q: As we head into JavaOne in 2003, where does Sun stand in the marketplace against its biggest competitors, both within and outside the Java community? Let's start with Microsoft.
Schwartz: We are number-two to Microsoft and we try harder when it comes to delivering software products into the world. The community of people who support Sun is a couple orders of magnitude larger than the community of people who support Microsoft, given that the number of companies that support Microsoft is about one. Our alternative to the Microsoft monopoly, the Java platform, is all about interoperability and portability, which are anathema to Microsoft's competitive strategy. Some people say that we're anti-Microsoft, and they are right. We believe in open systems, interoperability, portable code, and portable data—and these are all things that Microsoft has a hard time with.
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Jonathan Schwartz
Executive Vice President of Software
Sun Microsystems
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Q: How about IBM?
Schwartz: If Microsoft is a one-choice company, then IBM is the all-choices company. When you think about the number of operating systems that company now supports, it's staggering. IBM has a conflict of interest because it wants to be all things to all people. Its real agenda is to amplify complexity so it can send in a bunch of Global Services consultants to make it all work.
Q: What about BEA?
BEA is a great company. It is a partner, and while we have some spats with them in public, our folks work together very well. We need to do what we can to help BEA because the resources required to be a player in the future will be broader than most companies expect. I think the real platform competitors in this space are going to be Sun, Microsoft, and IBM.
Q: And how does Sun compete?
Schwartz: We offer choice in terms of platforms for running our platform. The Java platform runs on all of those different platforms, so we don't need to deliver an operating system to you, nor do we need to add to the complexity by scaring you with a message around incompatibility or scaring you that we're going to "end-of-life" the boat you've been riding.
Q: There was a perception that Java was slow to embrace Web services. Has that changed? How will Sun get in the driver's seat on future standards?
Schwartz: Java is the dominant language through which Web services are enabled. With J2EE 1.4, we're actually the first to deliver WS-I basic profile support in the platform, far ahead of anybody. You have to implement Web services in something and Java is the best place to do it. Many more developers are using Java to do Web-service development than any other platform. By comparison, there are no real .NET Web services in deployment at a level that would suggest Microsoft's platform message was successful. You can use its technology, but it's not really going out and deploying.
Regarding the higher-order standards, we are focused on the pragmatic things. When you see all the game-playing around reliable transactions and reliable messaging and security and choreography, that attests to the fact that you need some kind of orchestrated process and body to ensure that one standard exists, and not one product from one vendor.
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