Sun Microsystems Inc has found a somewhat unexpected partner for the multimedia unit it plans to set up in September, in the shape of the Thomson Consumer Electronics arm of Thomson SA, Paris. The planned new unit will be jointly funded and will target telephone company networks, cable television systems and other large-scale public digital networks. Sun will contribute technological expertise, Asynchronous Transfer Mode networking, network management and systems management software, and Thomson, which takes in the old RCA Corp consumer electronics business, will bring in consumer product expertise, compression technology, digital decoder experience and retail distribution capabilities. Thomson points out that all the fun-and-games offerings encompassed by the term multimedia will be consumer-centric. This new business unit represents a unique combination of computing and consumer expertise, reckons Sun’s chief executive Scott McNealy: We believe we’ll have a distinct advantage, due to our complementary technologies, in providing network operators with reliable, secure solutions based on open, standard interfaces and protocols, McNealy added.
