Sun backs Novell's directory By Deborah Gage, Sm@rt Reseller January 11, 1999 11:22 AM ET Sun Microsystems Inc. will unveil Jini in San Francisco this month, and standing alongside will be Novell Inc. with its Novell Directory Services. The two companies have been in talks for several months on Jini, which ultimately will allow resellers to manage objects on networks that extend beyond corporate walls. In particular, the deal could extend NDS to manage handheld computers, cell phones, digital cameras and other devices that are only now becoming network-enabled. And while NDS may not be the only Jini-enabled directory, Sun partners say it will start out as the clear front-runner. The alliance is something of a coup for Novell (NOVL) . Although Jini's success depends on Sun's ability to drive acceptance of networks filled with Java-enabled devices and to control how the back-end infrastructure develops, Jini has the potential to create entirely new business models and generate millions of dollars in revenue for its supporters. The deal also is a tribute to both companies' abilities to work out their differences over Java, since Novell Vice President Chris Stone has been one of Sun's most vocal critics. A plugged-in world So far, Sun (SUNW) , of Mountain View, Calif., has portrayed Jini as a way for devices to find and use each other over a network. Plug a Jini-enabled camera into a network, and it sends a Java agent to the network's lookup service and announces itself. The camera is now an object, and a user interface pops up on your PC. Take a picture, and you can store it on the Jini-enabled Quantum disk drive you've just plugged in. There's more. Axis is making a network interface that can represent older devices, like bubble-jet printers, with a proxy, at least on Sun's Solaris. Dallas Semiconductor is making what Sun calls "a Web server on a card" that can be embedded into light switches or appliances. Theoretically, you could control your home network by finding any device with a Java-enabled browser and authenticating yourself with a Java smart card or Java ring. Ultimately, Sun envisions big banks of servers holding Java objects announcing themselves to each other. Some will be branded, some for sale. And as Sun CEO Scott McNealy pointed out at Sun's Java show in New York last month, networks will layer on networks. Your set-top box could provide the lookup service for your home Jini network, while your cable company could provide the lookup service for set-top boxes. Miles to go But for Sun's vision to come true, the Jini infrastructure must be much farther along than it is today, and Novell understands that. Novell, of Provo, Utah, wants to make NDS ubiquitous, and it has invested in ObjectSpace Inc., a Java company that plans to make money by making Jini work securely with less ethereal technology such as the Object Management Group's CORBA and Microsoft Corp.'s DCOM. "In the early days of telephony, the same thing was true," said ObjectSpace cofounder Graham Glass. "When you connect to a component, you have to talk in that protocol. It's like when I talk English, he hears German." Because of such unresolved technical issues, IBM is still not officially supporting Jini. But ObjectSpace is also working closely with IBM. All three companies have different lookup services --Sun's, called JavaSpaces, is totally Java-centric and is currently designed for a local area network. ObjectSpace cofounder David Norris says he is confident Jini will be a success and that IBM, Sun and Novell will work things out. And while NDS may not be necessary as Jini moves to the Internet -- Norris says you could use search engines to keep track of objects -- he is not concerned. "Novell will be important at the corporate level, and Internet adoption of Jini will follow corporate adoption," he said. Novell also has allied with Cisco Systems Inc., which demonstrated a Jini-enabled home network last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "Cisco's IOS is an object to NDS," said Stone, who won't comment on any alliance with Sun. "You can bring it inside our directory and remotely bring your routers up and down. Lucent [Technologies Inc.], Nortel [Networks] and Cisco control the backbone, and ObjectSpace is about living in the network. If you look at directories over time, you will need federated directories." From MAILER-DAEMON@cs.depaul.edu Tue Jan 12 12:02:59 1999