Managing Director of Sun Microsoystems Australasia Jim Hassell talks about future directions for the company in the face of tough markets and increased competition.
Q: Scott McNealy has said that Sun invented the idea of Web services. If so, why are Microsoft and IBM the ones who seem to be getting all the credit?
A: Microsoft might be winning the promotion battle--as you would expect with the colossal marketing budget for .NET--but they are not winning on the product and implementation side. To a lesser extent IBM is getting some airplay with its advertising on infrastructure, but you have to look at the runs on the board to get the true picture.
For 20 years, Sun's vision has been that the "Network is the Computer", but it is only in the last four to five years with the growth of the Internet, that other vendors have caught on.
We have always pushed open systems and standards that enable anyone access, anytime on anything, which is what Web services are all about. Also, many of the things that make Web Services possible today--such as TCP/IP and Internet standards such as NFS and XML--are intrinsic parts of Sun's DNA. In this context it is true we invented Web services, which is why we are focused on implementations and new products rather than heavily on promotion.
Sun customers such as BPay, the West Australian Government, the Singapore Government, and hundreds of global customers have already deployed innovative Web-based solutions. Internally, we are using Web services to do everything from manage HR to procurement to sales.
In contrast, Web services are a new paradigm for Microsoft, which has always been about proprietary systems for PCs, and IBM is pretty much about selling everything to anyone.
IBM has a huge services organisation that it needs to employ and deploy, and its Web services offering is about piecing together existing but disparate hardware and software, that requires costly integration work.
So while promotion may be important in gaining mindshare, what customers want are partners that have a clear and consistent vision and proven credentials. Sun is in the fortunate position to have both.
If Microsoft ends up dominating the Web services market, what would be the problem?
Like any market, if one player dominates it, prices go up and innovation goes down. Microsoft's .NET model relies on tying users to the proprietary Windows platform and online authentication using products such as Passport.
This strategy has huge ramifications for privacy and security. Microsoft would hold on its servers information on everything a user does on the Net, such as banking data, healthcare purchases, leisure preferences, and so on.
That gives rise not only to concerns around security, but also how the information will be used in the longer term. For example, if you do a large number of transactions with your bank, there is nothing stopping Microsoft from charging your bank per transaction--in doing so, becoming a toll keeper for every transaction done via the Net, or even moving into the provision of banking services.
Given the pervasive nature of the Internet today, if Microsoft were to dominate Web services, they can influence a user's behaviour simply by screening the information to which they are exposed via the browser, office suite, or the operating system.
Web services
Sun has said that its Web services can alleviate the "pain points" that businesses are feeling today. What are these pain points?
Most of our customers want help in ways to boost revenue, control costs, and improve customer service. In the case of BPay, by developing an Internet bill payment service, users can pay a utility bill, check their bank balance, and transfer money to another account all via the one portal, at any time of the day or night. This is better customer service at a lower cost.
If we look forward, BPay now has the infrastructure to add new functionality--different data, different data types, different applications--through the same customer interface to meet new, unexpected challenges more cost efficiently.
The infrastructure we put in place helps them do this by leveraging existing information--often held in legacy applications--and making it available as a service across the network that can be accessed by anyone, anytime on any device. We call this Services on Demand.
A customer does not have to throw out old technologies to transition to Web services, nor do they have to write new code every time they want to deploy a new product.
The best way to harness this evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, approach is to put in place an infrastructure framework that is open and standards based to enable a step-by-step transition to Web services--what we provide in the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE).
There is no reason why using existing Sun technologies, the banks, power providers, water companies, and so on, can't all link up over the Internet, so that the entire payment function from end-to-end is automated via a Web service.
With next generation technologies, these Web services will be even smarter. By detecting context factors such as where the user is located and their personal payment terms, a Web service can tailor the information to the individual customer's needs without manual intervention. That is even better service at lower cost.
Isn't there more money to be made in software and services today, than hardware?
Not necessarily. There is plenty of money in hardware and there will be for years to come. In terms of what Sun is doing, we have a strategy to provide infrastructure around the Internet.
That means providing hardware, some operating systems software, and some Internet access and usage software such as directories, portals and so on. Sun has always been a product company and still is.
We rely on our partners to deliver innovative applications. Customers come up with the content and we help them deliver it efficiently and effectively. This strategy prevents us from competing with our customers and partners.
