Sun Microsystems Inc unveiled the first fruits of its i-Planet Inc acquisition at the Java Enteprise Solutions Symposium in Paris yesterday, revealing a remote access suite that connects users to corporate applications via a web browser. The Sunnyvale, California remote access and Java developer cost Sun $30m last September, and the completion of the products shown yesterday is said to have cost the company a further $6m.
Sun claims i-Planet products, including RemotePassage, a way of accessing IT resources from a Java-enabled browser and IPS, a turnkey hardware and software bundle for internet access, go farther than conventional portalbased remote access packages which only link with email or HTML applications. Instead, i- Planet is a user’s secure gateway to any application running on Solaris, UnixAE, Microsoft Windows/NT, Novell, or IBM MVS operating systems, Sun said.
Speaking from the conference in Paris, Sun’s new technologies manager, Andy Bush told Computerwire: Users can access all their office applications, email, files and calendars from any Java- enabled browser without the hassle of dialing into the corporate network, losing the connection or never getting through. And IT managers no longer have the nightmare of managing racks of modems.
The i-Planet architecture features three components: the gateway, the i-Planet server and the i-Planet network software. The gateway handles the login and authentication of users accessing corporate resources and passes the request to the server. The server, sitting outside the corporate firewall, contains the software responsible for file access, mail access, system administration and other enterprise application services mirror. The network software contains the authentication, profiling and management services required for remote access.
Sun has also pulled in remote Windows display technology from Citrix; remote PC control software from Symantec; and security software for authorized access, to reach the server from any location from GraphOn. All will work through the i-Planet software.
I-Planet will be available on May 17, 1999 and sold through the Sun-Netscape Alliance. Pricing from Sun is based on per-user model, scaling from $10,000 for 100 users, $39,995 for 1000 users and $16 per user in large quantities.
Sun also demonstrated its long overdue Java accelerator, HotSpot – blaming the delay on developing the thread synchronization technology that, due to its sophistication, took longer than anticipated. There will be no license fee for HotSpot and it can be downloaded off Sun’s Java web site on Friday, a Sun spokesperson said. Sun claims the new engine will allow users to run applications faster than any other Java Virtual Machine, but has so far failed to publish any figures.
