Sun Microsystems Inc has launched an embedded application server written in Java aimed at small devices deployed remotely. With a 100k footprint, the Java Embedded Server (JES) is designed to serve up information from devices such as vending machines, telephone switches, gas pumps and the like to enable the operators of such devices to check on the status of them and for them to be able to offer other services besides just gas and beverages. It supports all the necessary protocols, such as HTTP, SNMP for network management, logging thread management and so on, and is available both as a Sun product and on an OEM basis so other vendors can add services they require. A set of JavaServer Services sits atop the server engine, which invokes and manages them. Mail, fax and other services can be added on top of them by developers. The services push the size of JES to a shade under 500k. Sun has had the product out at 200 beta sites, a lot of which were apparently set-top box manufacturers, but also included satellite tracking devices, telecom equipment manufacturers and tools to monitor things in the home. Sun emphasizes that JES is complementary to, rather than a replacement for, PersonalJava and EmbeddedJava, which are shrunken versions of the Java development kit (JDK) and environments in which to run Java applets, but JES enables a greater variety of applications to be executed remotely, says Sun. The JES can run on top of EmbeddedJava or PersonalJava, or any other Java virtual machine. In the Sun product space, JES is situated between EmbeddedJava and PersonalJava technologies and the full-blown application server Sun got with the July acquisition of NetDynamics – news about Sun’s strategy for that can be expected next month. Support for Sun’s remote method invocation (RMI) is included, but Corba is apparently too fat at present to be included. Servlets are also supported for server-side Java applets. Sun plans to do other embedded servers in this mold, such as cache and proxy servers Sun believes that it is alone in this space for a while, as only the likes of Xerox Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co have produced software to manage printers in this manner and that technology is proprietary, it says. Embedded web servers such as that offered by Spyglass Inc only represent a subset of what JES can do, the company claims. So, from the bottom up Sun has a Java embedded server, Java web server, Java application server (NetDynamics) and Jini, which could make them all obsolete if it does everything its claimed to do. JES is available now from $3,500 for one seat through $30,000 for 10 and $72,500 for 25 seats. There is also a single-digit dollar royalty fee per seat deployed, which could rack up to a fairly substantial sum if some of the more common embedded systems take up this technology.
