Small company takes great strides in distributed computing with an implementation of Sun's Jini August 24, 1998 — The next generation of Java-based distributed computing architectures is starting to take shape, thanks in part to the efforts of Sun Microsystems and a little-known company called ObjectSpace.As a network-aware programming language, Java has the potential to fundamentally change how IT shops think about building networks and the applications that run on them. But right now, no network operating system infrastructure really leverages Java’s full potential.In an effort to change that, both Sun and ObjectSpace are readying implementations of a Java computing model called Jini, which is in turn based on a Sun project called JavaSpaces. Jini is designed to make Java computing pervasive by using distributed computing services, rather than specific applications and servers, said James Gosling, Sun vice president, during a keynote at the Software Development East show in Washington last week.Jini uses JavaSpaces to allow users to execute multiple objects on multiple systems simultaneously across the network.“JavaSpaces is essentially a facility for communicating tasks out and bringing jobs back,” Gosling said. Gosling said IT shops should be able to build applications that use all the distributed-system horsepower on a network to run supercomputer-class applications, and use JavaSpaces to manage them.But Sun is not as far down this path as ObjectSpace, which has quietly amassed a customer base of 5,000 customers and counts Tivoli and Novell among its licensees for a Java-based distributed computing architecture called Voyager. Novell declined to comment, but Tivoli is expected to incorporate Voyager technology into a network-management offering later this year.Voyager Professional Edition, unveiled at Software Development East, is a set of mobile agents and Remote Method Invocation (RMI) routines built on an object request broker that complies with the Object Management Group’s CORBA standard and Sun’s RMI specification for Java. According to CEO David Norris, ObjectSpace will release a complete commercial implementation of Jini later this year that will let users of consumer electronic devices access Internet services to find other resources more easily. Sun is only expected to release a Jini reference implementation. Novell is among the companies intending to support Jini; sources said it is negotiating a deeper alliance with ObjectSpace.Later this year, ObjectSpace will deliver add-on services targeted at transaction management and encryption, respectively. Java