The received impression in some quarters that Sun Microsystems Inc is in danger of fumbling the electronic commerce ball while it focuses on Java isn’t true, says director of internet and electronic marketing Dennis Tsu, although he agrees Sun must do a better job of explaining its strategy. Tsu says evidence from Georgia Tech’s latest internet commerce study shows that while consumers may be spending an average of $100 on each internet transaction, the vast majority of sales – 90% – are and will continue to be business-to-business, more or less reflecting the balance of commercial transactions in the non-internet world. That’s why, Tsu says, Sun is focusing its efforts on electronic commerce between businesses; selling the back-end servers, the internet infrastructure and the Java application development components. Tsu says Sun is not seeking to replace HP’s VeriFone credit card processing terminals or other retail point of sales devices and doesn’t have the $200m that IBM is spending on its e- business alone. He believes the establishment of secure internet payment mechanisms and the proliferation of internet-enabled devices for making purchases – including network computers – will provide Sun with several opportunities. First of all it expects next month to complete a specification for a version of that can be used on Java point-of-sale devices. The idea is that users will be able to configure point-of-sale equipment – from different manufacturers – that is interoperable via their use of Java PoS. Tsu says it’s a delicate business getting PoS vendors lined up publicly behind this particular Java cut because of the very proprietary nature of existing PoS solutions. It’s a great business and not one that IBM, HP/VeriFone or NCR will wish to give any part of away to third party manufacturers. That’s why we’re unlikely to see a bunch of PoS vendors on stage together showing off Java PoS registers and gizmos like the event Sun hosted for vendors of Java phones back at the Java Business Expo show in New York. However most of these vendors have decided to use Java PoS, Tsu, claims, and says in most cases they’ll require only minimal changes to their operating environments. At the front end Sun will sell JavaStations and Java device technologies, Java chips, smart cards and software that will be able to work in conjunction with all Java PoS products.
