Through new platform, developers are encouraged to "change the rules"
Los Angeles (09/10/97) — Sun Microsystems Inc. president Ed Zander made a call for the industry to move toward networks and Java during a keynote speech at the Internet Commerce Exposition here Tuesday.
Despite the I-commerce slant of the conference, Zander spent the majority of his speech extolling the benefits of Java and making predictions regarding what kind of bandwidth will be available in the future, as well as how networking will become more pervasive.
“The network is going to be the most pervasive technology that we’ve seen in the last several years in this industry,” Zander said. “The network is more and more becoming the competitive advantage.”
In a thinly veiled attempt to show the benefits of Java in connecting and running on different platforms, Zander also stated that the telecommunications industry had the “right idea” and should be emulated, pointing out that telephones use different operating systems but all function the same due to the back-end systems they employ. Zander predicted that the networking of computers should follow suit.
“The actual telecommunications industry had it right,” Zander said. “This is the dawn of the network age.”
Zander also used the opportunity to demonstrate several Java-based products such as the Java ring, Web phones, and thin-client Java servers.
In one of his few direct references to the use of I-commerce, Zander predicted that business-to-business commerce would have the greatest impact on companies in the next several years.
“There’s no doubt that this is a huge opportunity for companies like ourselves to make things easier for our customers,” Zander said.
In closing, Zander offered the following advice: Invest in networking, in Java, in Webtops, in standards, and in electronic commerce, and partner with a pure play network company. He also made a call to developers to use Java for their programs.
“You have an opportunity if you are a developer to change the rules,” Zander said.
Sun Microsystems Inc., in Mountain View, CA, can be reached at https://www.sun.com.
