If Bill Gates was listening to the presentations at the Sun Microsystems' Internet symposium in Berlin this week, he was probably thinking of Oscar Wilde: "There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about."
The purpose of the symposium may have been to show how Sun's networking language, Java, is set to transform the way business is done, but senior Sun executives who addressed the conference seemed as intent on bashing Microsoft as they were on demonstrating Java's potential.
Sun has decided that Java's future depends on applications being written in it, and the threeday symposium was mainly aimed at persuading developers to do so. The central theme was the launch of Sun's "Road to Java", a fivestep approach to implementing business applications in Java. Running alongside the conference, a solutions fair demonstrated that many such applications have already been written.
Sun's chief executive officer and president, Scott McNealy, addressed the conference on Wednesday morning, presenting his vision of Java's future to the 4,000 industry representatives present. He demonstrated a Java phone which, complete with screen, could be used as a home ATM, a Java cellular phone which doubled up as an Internet terminal with full keyboard, and a Javacard.
Javacards are smart cards, so called because, unlike conventional bank or credit cards, the information they contain can be modified.
McNealy cited many of the possible uses for these phonecard-like devices which contain onboard Java computers - from inserting them into rental cars to automatically adjust the seats and mirrors, to storing your phone numbers and turning any phone into your own personal model to which all your calls are automatically routed.
But McNealy knew he had to address the issue of Microsoft, which signed up for Java but then decided to implement it its own way, ignoring Sun's much publicised "100 per cent Pure Java" standard.
Calling Javacards the "Achilles' Leg" (sic) of Microsoft, McNealy said: "You just can't put Windows on your smart card". He downplayed Microsoft's alleged breach of its Java licence, highlighting instead that there are 116 other licence holders who Sun isn't suing, and calling on developers to run Netscape's Internet browser instead of Microsoft's, and to "use non-Microsoft development tools".
The reason for this message was made equally clear: if Java does succeed then, because its applications can run on any platform, Sun stands to sell more of its highend servers, reducing the threat from Microsoft's Windows NT platform.
On top of this, although Sun collects no licence fees from applications written in Java, it will be paid a licensing fee for every piece of hardware running Java 96 - so-called Java virtual machines.
Sun has long used the slogan "The network is the computer", and with Java it is putting its money where its mouth is. In the process, it is throwing down the gauntlet to Microsoft. It remains to be seen what Bill Gates does in response.
See also page 11
