Sun Microsystems has unveiled a real-time business
collaboration platform that integrates e-mail, instant messaging,
calendar, search and content management capabilities.
The Sun One (Open Net Environment) Collaborative Business
Platform will compete offerings from IBM and Microsoft.
However, Sun One communication products group manager Patrick
Dorsey believed Sun has a leg up in terms of scalability and a
strong customer base for its existing collaboration offerings.
The platform includes the company's Sun One Messaging Server,
Sun One Calendar Server, Sun One Instant Messaging, Sun One Portal
Server and Sun One Identity Server products.
Because of the inclusion of the portal and identity management
offerings, the Collaborative Business Platform offers access to the
disparate content and services through a secure portal, with single
sign-on and policy control.
Additionally, the platform scales to millions of users, Dorsey
said.
"The top line benefit is that the Sun One platform allows
enterprises to expand and extend collaboration services out to a
wide community of users," Dorsey said.
Companies can extend the services not just in-house but to
remote workers, customers and business partners, Sun said
Dana Gardner, senior analyst with The Yankee Group in Boston,
said that Sun is differentiating itself with its portal approach to
the collaboration platform, despite the fact that it does not have
the installed base that Microsoft's Exchange or IBM's Domino
products have.
Additionally, the Sun platform allows companies to put all their
collaboration capabilities on a single server or small number of
servers, Gardner said.
However, he noted that "all three of these vendors are headed in
the same direction, to allow collaboration components to work
within business applications with one framework."
The new Sun platform also highlights IM and presence
capabilities, which is the ability to tell when a user is online
and available, which are the key features of IBM Lotus Sametime and
Microsoft's Greenwich enterprise messaging products.
Sun One Collaborative Business Platform features enhanced
messaging capabilities from the company's new Sun One Instant
Messaging 6.0 software. The IM technology offers encrypted sessions
and the ability for companies to integrate third-party virus and
spam protection software.
Building on the IM capabilities, the platform also offers
real-time alerts, polling, news, conferences and file transfers.
The calendar and scheduling services allow users to be notified of
a specific event via pop-up alerts.
Mobile access is available either through Sun's Mobile Access
Pack with the Sun One Portal Server, or through products provided
by Sun partner NTT Data.
To aid deployment, the Sun is offering consulting services from
itself or its partners as fixed-price packages.
The Sun One Collaborative Business Platform will be available
worldwide on 14 April, Dorsey said. Price varies according to the
size and extent of the deployment.