Sun Microsystems Inc has gone to GraphOn Corp for a Java thin client and X server to enable Unix applications to run its JavaStation network computers. But it appears there has been yet another delay to the JavaStation roll out, as Sun is now promising an early fall deployment of 3,000 machines internally. Last we heard from Sun, that would be done by this month, July. Sun got back to us just in time to claim that everything was still on schedule – but it seems to us that the schedule is pretty flexible. However, the rollout of the so-called ‘coffee- maker’ form of the JavaStation will happen in the fall, Sun says. And this is not just some internal rollout; it is the full volume shipment it is talking about. So it appears both types of JavaStation will be ready in volume at about the same time: a year after they were announced last October. Sun couldn’t say whether anybody was testing the coffee maker boxes yet, though we doubt anybody is, as the company is waiting for the microSparc IIep RISC chip that goes inside the coffee maker to be ready, which in turn is being held up by JavaOS. The current ‘brick’ design on Sun employees’ desks and at a few customer sites, has the microSparc II at its heart. JavaOS is in the process of being handed from JavaSoft to SunSoft. Sun will offer Graph-On’s GO-Joe software to existing JavaStation beta testers, as well as bundle it on all machines it ships. GraphOn ported GO-Joe to Solaris and the deal is non-exclusive. The X server part of GO-Joe uses the company’s own protocol, Rapid X to talk to a thin Java client on the JavaStation. GraphOn says it is talking to other network computer vendors about licensing the software, but declined to name names, and terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sun licenses PC-X software from NetManage Inc’s AGE Logic, but it has not, and has no plans to, develop a Java version.
