While Sun Microsystems pursues smart Web services and its SunONE Vision, its senior enterprise architect for Europe, Walter Jenny, envisages a very different route for the company.
"SunOne is there just to show how easily J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) can be leveraged to provide smart Web services," says Jenny, who is in the country to talk at Computer Faire. "Web services are a bit over-hyped at the moment." Jenny believes that Web services will only take off in three to four years, not because of lack of technology, but rather human factors.
"Technology is a great thing in my personal life, but it should really be there to support people. This is not the case: people are there to handle technology," he says.
Jenny believes there is a long cycle between people dominance and technology dominance. At the moment we are firmly entrenched in the technology dominant phase of the cycle, which Jenny estimates is as long as 20 years.
Unlike many Sun employees, Jenny does not see competition from Microsoft (in the Web services space, at least) as negative. "The competition is fairly positive. It's a fair game, we're all playing with the same cards."
Jenny doesn't believe that Microsoft is Sun's biggest competitor, ranking IBM as Sun's greatest concern - and its biggest partner. "For IBM, Java allows them to cover many different operating systems, and tell the same story across different heterogeneous systems."
[Technology] should really be there to support people. This is not the case: people are there to handle technology.
Walter Jenny, senior enterprise architect, Sun Microsystems
IBM recently announced that it too will compete in the smart Web services space against Sun's SunONE and Microsoft's Hailstorm and .Net initiatives.
Although he may have different ideas on how to get there, Jenny is very aware of Sun's long-term goals.
"Sun is looking for the huge data centre markets," he says. "This goes hand-in-hand with isolating technology and making it really simple - like the telephone. The technology stuff needs to be simple - it should just make life easier. We need to get to a point where it doesn't control you - you control it."
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