Sun’s Zander sees networks everywhere

Los Angeles (03/12/98) — At Internet World, Edward Zander, chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems Inc., gave his perspective on what he says will be the “network revolution” — a ubiquitous, simplified network, which is available “anytime, anywhere, anyplace, on anything.”

“In the 80s, it was all about disc, DRAM, and microprocessors,” Zander said. “Now, it’s the Internet, bandwidth, and language and development tools. So with these things, we believe we’re approaching the age of bringing easier network access to bring the information to you.”

According to Zander, Sun’s vision is “to make every desktop and network-based client user-agnostic and browser-based and to have a thin ‘Webtop’ environment, letting the network do network functions, letting the complexity reside on the server.”

Zander described a Java smart card that he said will essentially become a user’s network, allowing access to information ranging from a library card to an office desktop.

The Sun COO also took the time during the keynote to talk about “that company up north.” Zander asked — why deal with upgrading with all new software individually on numerous desktops — as with Windows — when you can manage all of the desktops singularly?

“I believe we’re going to see movement between fat clients and thin client,” Zander said.

Zander also demonstrated various products, such as a digital answering machine that a user dials in to to retrieve voice mail, e-mail, and fax messages. The demonstration showed that an e-mail message can be digitized to allow a user to listen to it over the phone. In addition, a demo showed how users can download a song from a Web site and burn it into a CD themselves. He also talked about Sales Vision, a full network-based Java sales force automation application.

Crowd reaction to the keynote speech was positive.

“Instead of having to continually buy upgrades, with everything residing in one place, with one piece of central software to maintain, this will really improve administration,” said Maria Menendez, an IS manager at Alamo Rent A Car, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

“I was pretty impressed,” said Bill Roth, application manager at the department of transportation, in Topeka, Kansas. “I’m looking at this technology trying to figure out how to use it — what to wait for and what to put in now. As far as remote computing, it now seems to make more sense to wait for the technology rather than to force fit it now.”