Customers who aren't interested in Sun's software may still benefit from its pricing because it provides them with added leverage to negotiate better deals with other vendors, RedMonk's O'Grady said.
Sun's goal is to get its software into the hands of as many customers and developers as possible -- even if it means giving the software away for free to customers who wouldn't otherwise buy it, such as small businesses, said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president in charge of software.
"We look at software in general at Sun as a way to open new markets. Whether we give away a product for free and upsell or upgrade, or give the Java runtime away for free and sell the desktop, we are focussed on pursuing market expansion with software, then we'll monetize it by selling other software and services and systems," he said.
Wider use of the software will encourage more ISVs to port their software to the Java platform, according to Schwartz -- he offered the example of financial applications developed for IBM mainframes. It will also help to ensure a steady supply of developers with skills in Java, he said.
The Java Enterprise System is available for Solaris running on Sun's Sparc chips and on x86 chips from Intel Corp. and AMD. Next year it will be offered on Linux and Windows, which should also help proliferate the use of the products, Schwartz said.
Sun is also willing to drop the price of its desktop software in exchange for wider distribution. It struck a deal recently to provide China Standard Software Co. Ltd. (CSSC), a consortium of technology companies that does work for the government in China, with as many as 1 million seats of its Java Desktop System.
"As we move to deals in the millions we need to look at a pricing scheme that lowers the barriers to entry. ... One way is by setting up a 'per citizen' price, likely based on the GDP (gross domestic product) of a country, and using that as a mechanism to cultivate new market opportunities for Sun," Schwartz said.
Analysts have questioned how much money Sun stands to make from the deal in China. Schwartz declined to say what price the Chinese government is paying for the software, but insisted that Sun stands to profit considerably from the deal.
Sun moved to a system recently where it releases all of its new and upgraded products in quarterly cycles. The following software news was also announced Wednesday:
-- Project Rave, Sun's much anticipated Java development environment and the centerpiece of its plan to broaden Java's appeal by making it easier to use, was officially named Java Studio Creator. It includes the basic components for building Web-based Java applications, said Joe Keller, a Sun vice president of marketing. But certain components, such as one for creating network identities, will not be included, he said. The software is expected to be production-ready by late summer of 2004. It will initially support Windows, Solaris and Solaris on x86. A Linux version is in the works, Keller said.
-- Starting Dec. 15, Sun will provide support services for customers using OpenOffice, the free version of its StarOffice productivity suite. Pricing wasn't available late Tuesday.
-- Sun is developing two new tools for the Java Desktop System for release in the first half of 2004. One is for configuring desktops, the other is for helping users migrate from Windows PCs to Sun's, said Curtis Sasaki, vice president of engineering for Sun's Desktop
Solutions group.
-- Sun announced the N1 Service Provisioning System, part of its N1 initiative for managing datacenters efficiently. It's due in the first quarter next year for Solaris, RedHat, Windows 2000 and AIX, and is designed to help customers deploy applications more quickly across a group of servers. Pricing wasn't announced.
-- Sun announced several enhancements to Solaris, including performance improvements for servers based on x86 processors, and better diagnostic capabilities. Details will be posted at http://www.sun.com/solaris.
(Robert McMillan of the IDG News Service San Francisco bureau contributed to this report.)
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