McNealy & Co. deliver gospel to the masses at PC Expo
New York — Sure, the news from the 16th Annual PC Expo (June 18-20) was filled with stuff like Windows Office 97, the Sony VAIO, and the big PDA comeback. But Java had its own share of the spotlight at the massive consumer show, and it focused primarily on Sun Microsystem’s firebrand CEO Scott McNealy.
Before an audience of about 1,000 personal computer professionals, McNealy began his keynote address by ad-libbing: “It always feels a little dangerous for me to speak at a PC show. There are people watching, so don’t throw anything.” He then launched into an engaging advocacy of his company’s vision for the future of open network computing, giving special emphasis to the role of Java in it.
“This is an industry driven by fear and anger among buyers, and [Sun has] been addressing those feelings for a long time by using the network and published interfaces to drive our solutions,” McNealy said. “The good news is the Internet has come along and done what we could never do: set standards that no single company can control.
“The final piece of the [open-network] puzzle was a new language that would be hardware and operating-system independent, was secure, and would allow for the software-distribution and user-administration features that we all want and need in our desktop environments. I don’t need to spend a lot of time evangelizing Java; everybody already knows about it. But the most important piece of it is that today you don’t have to port. Write your application in Java and it runs on every microprocessor and every operating system out there. This is a big, big win just in terms of planetary productivity. This feature alone says Java is a good answer. It’s interesting that all the major companies — from SCO to Apple — are now embedding the Java Virtual Machine as standard APIs in their operating environments. This is unusual, right? Microsoft is actually OEMing software from a competitor without buying them.”
McNealy noted that as the APIs move closer to their release, Microsoft and other OS vendors “have all agreed to implement those [revised] APIs within their OSs and to test for compatibility at the same time. And as they each make changes and enhancements, they give them back to us, so we can give them to everybody else. Is that strange? Somehow, they’ll figure out how to get a proprietary edge, but at least we can enjoy the fantasy of actually having an open, multivendor, portable, scalable platform. So we’re operating on that assumption right now. We’ll see what happens.”
McNealy then went on to discuss the promise of the “zero-administration client,” jargon for the Java-driven network computers of the not-so-distant future. (Sun’s own network computer is expected to be formally unveiled in September; other companies such as Oracle also have network computers in the works.) He compared the simplicity of such devices to the telephone. “If you pick up a telephone and you don’t get a dial tone by the time it reaches your ear, you’re angry,” he said. “When you turn on your computer, on the other hand, isn’t there a little part of you that, when it boots up, says, ‘Yes, it’s going to be a good day!’? Data-tone is just a little different from dial-tone, isn’t it? What you want is an environment where you turn your machine on and as fast as the screen can light up you have booted a Java-enabled browser, and you then just start clicking on things you want, running the latest versions of those applications. It’s a completely different scenario.
“Dedicated-use environments are what these zero-admin clients are all about. You’re also going to see lots of personal productivity tools as well as a whole bunch of new devices: hub drivers, switchers, printers, copiers, set-top boxes, televisions, game machines, telephones, automobiles, machine tools. It’s Microsoft At Work done right…. Just give yourself a really cool workstation with no CD, no floppy, no disk, and no Microsoft…. Personally, I’d love to find a PC in every hotel room, so I don’t have to carry a notebook around with me…. This has the power to bring computing to mere mortals.”
Global partners
In his address, McNealy announced Sun’s acquisition of Lighthouse Design, a West Coast provider of object-technology productivity tools. “We think objects are here for sure now,” he said. “So we’ve acquired an excellent little design team to help move our object efforts forward.”
McNealy also announced that Sun and IBM would expand their cooperation in the PC server market: “IBM servers will run Solaris and will run the Java Virtual Machine in the Netscape browser environment.” Sun will also participate with Unisys in a similar “global partnership,” McNealy said.
Birds of a feather
In a half-day tutorial at PC Expo, Arshad Noor of Sun Professional Services took initiates through a primer on getting started in Java programming. And Rinaldo Di Giorgio, a senior systems engineer in Sun’s New York offices and JavaWorld columnist, addressed a meeting of the Metro NY Internet/Database Users Group with a more sophisticated talk, called “A Peek Into the Future,” on the potentials of Java development in applications from video on demand to game platforms. “There is enough there right now for Nintendo and Sega to bring this to your home,” Di Giorgio told the local Net veterans.
True Javaholics, though, found their way to the Java Management API “Birds of a Feather.” Moderated by Brian Biles, director of product marketing for SunSoft’s Enterprise Network Products division, the panel consisted of representatives from Central Design Systems, Cisco Systems, JavaSoft, Legato Systems, Platinum Technology, and 3Com.
Steven Hardy, director of product architecture at Platinum, summed up the concerns of the panel: “I perceive systems management as broken. We’re not doing a very good job of it, and the blame can be found in the tools we’ve been using — essentially unchanged for the last ten years. So I am very motivated to move as fast as I can toward Java.”
“The Java Management API is going to enable a new class of multivendor management applications,” said Biles. “Unlike today’s applications, they will run the same way on any platform, and they will integrate at run time, even to the look and feel of the graphical user interface. There were 16 vendors supporting the API at its announcement at JavaOne, six of whom showed demos together at the BOF at PC Expo. I haven’t seen this level of excitement and commitment to a new standard among management vendors since SNMP in 1988.”
Heard around the press room
Applix released news of its Anyware family of network applications using Java to deploy interactive business tools to corporate desktops. (See https://www.applix.com/espresso for details.)
According to a prominent Windows analyst, Microsoft will call its Jakarta environment “Visual J++.” Details are expected to be announced soon.
According to a well-informed Java journalist, EarthWeb is in “due diligence” with Rockefeller family interests for venture capital, and Marimba is in discussions with Morgan Stanley, the New York-based investment firm.
The Computer Press Association gave Business Week‘s Amy Cortese its “Best Expository Feature” award for her November 1995 article “The Software Revolution,” which covered the rise of Java and other new interactive development languages to the forefront of mainstream computing.
800 miles per hour
Summing up his advice to those in the personal computer business, Sun’s McNealy said: “Realize that no matter where you think you are, you’re probably hopelessly behind. Somewhere behind you is someone moving up at about 800 miles per hour. You are in no danger of moving too fast toward Java in this field — go like crazy for it.” And that is exactly what the chief of Sun is doing: going like crazy for Java — even in the heart of the PC universe.
