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Sun Launches Instant Messaging Server
theIG writes "According to this article at geek.com, and another one at InternetWeek, Sun has shipped the first part of its new enterprise collaboration platform to compete with Exchange and Domino. Dubbed 'Sun ONE Instant Messaging 6.0,' this server will work with other products to be released in May, to allow a single login for all of its services that allow connections from outside a corporate firewall." Instant messaging is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace. Local messaging servers like this were only the next logical step for businesses which don't wish to rely on an outside network for their messaging.
You can run your own Jabber server, and it can also message other Jabber users. Some of the clients support encryption too.
we have a company irc server where i work. works well enough.
That hardly matters for corporate users, at whom this product is aimed. The idea is that employees use it mainly for interoffice messaging, not yapping all day to their pals.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
This way they'll never get JoeSixpack to buy a single server!.. Come on!..
So this costs $30 per user and no mention of the client software requirements. Will they just be Solaris or Linux/Windows/Solaris? As other people have said why not just role out jabber?
With Sun: For a 100 person organsiation cost = $3000 + implementation time
With Jabber: implementation time
BIt of a no brainer?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
The appeal to me is that Jabber is an open standard with well thought out open protocols. Anyone can write their own Jabber client in any language. Same for interfaces.
There are libraries that let you write integration code for any program you have. Search CPAN for Jabber and you'll see what I mean.
Can I interface Sun's product with my company's homebrew scheduling system and the online shop I wrote? I know that I can with Jabber.
Jim
-- My Weblog.
"for businesses which don't wish to rely on an outside network for their messaging"
They may not wish to rely on outside systems for internal communication but connections to outside IM systems may be essential. I won't lie I've not read the link yet. But my first though is how it would interact with other messaging systems.
The current biggies AIM, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo are no good as fragmented seperates - think back to BBS systems. Until they all sit down and decide to play together and use an Open standard it's not going to be as usefull as it could be. Untill then people will use what ever "frigs" they can to get them to interoperate such as Trillian (recommned the pro version by the way) or Jabbers connections.
Of course being HW focused if Sun push for an Open messaging standard touting their HW to power it all we could see some action but unfortunately they are a bit late in the game to weild that sort of power.
IM should interoperate and be as widespread as e-mail but it won't while everyone diggs in and backs their own standard.
.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
the first part of its new enterprise collaboration platform to compete with Exchange and Domino. Dubbed 'Sun ONE InstantMessaging 6.0
First the abrupt jump from Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 8, and now the first version of a new product is dubbed 6.0! Someone needs to smack the marketroids at Sun upside the head with the news that version numbers aren't just there because they make a pretty sound when you say them, they're meant to convey information to the customer. Sun's engineers seem immune to this, Solaris 8 still reports itself internally as SunOS 5.8, which kinda makes sense. Microsoft are Sybase are also guilty of doing it.
I can imagine the meeting now:
Marketer: Version 2 is better than 1 right?
Engineer: Sure
Marketer: And version 3 is better than 2?
Engineer: Umm, usually.
Marketer: Great! So the higher the number, the better the product!
Ah, I remember the good old days when Sun competed on technology, not hype. Most people I know are still running 2.6 in production, there's simply not enough new stuff in 8 to justify anything more than calling it 2.8, but while it's easy to get sign-off on a minor version patch, major versions need a lot more regression (on paper at least) and who's got the time for that?
> ... frankly it's too late for a new entry.
I read many comments like yours on Slashdot, and I can understand why you say that. For typical slashdotters, yes, Sun's announcement feels like too late. If you live in a major city in US or its metropolitan area, perhaps that's how you feel. If you work in the IT industry, more so. But the reality is that we are still at the beginning of the information age. I truly feel that the market is wide open.
If you look beyond US metropolitan area (and other, what they call, developed countries), there is a huge opportunity. There does not seem to be a wide margin in the IT industry in US, but there is China. There's large part of EU. Potentially, Middle East, now that Iraq war is pretty much over. Just that... it's over 5 times bigger that the whole US. Market is wide open.
In addition, Sun does have competitive edge over Exchange and Domino. The fact is that MS is stuck in the world of 32 bit. They say IA-64 is coming, but even if it arrives tomorrow, how long do they take to make it really functional AND get support from other ISVs? Domino is a competitive product, but Sun is really kicking IBM's ass in high end because of its quality, openness, and price.
I am not a marketing analyst and I cannot or dear not predict the future, BUT I do say that "... it's too late" sounds a little premature.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I work at a major corporation, and we use "Lotus Sametime" as our messenging client. At first I was put off by the lack of features (ie. timestamping, etc..) but it has interoperability with AIM, so I find it quite nice to use.
As long as Sun goes with something like AOL compatibility for outside-the-intranet communication, they should be sitting pretty. Why would this even be necessary? Well the obvious is chatting with friends/family - without having to install a secondary client - but, also I know in my company we deal with outside agencies and businesses, and its much easier being able to IM them, than to send emails, or phone.
I went through practically every Linux client I could find before finding one that I was happy with. Psi is a Qt-based client that acts and feels very much like the original ICQ client. No ads, sidebars, topbars, navbars, barbars... just a regular clean and simple IM client. There is an extensive client list for Win32, Linux and MacOSX which lists the features of each. Psi works on all three, which is another reason I chose it. That, and the fact that, at the time, it was the only NON-Gtk client that looked half assed presentable and the ONLY Linux client that didn't take up a lot of screen real estate, and the ONLY Linux client that did NOT pop up the incoming message, stealing focus from whatever I was typing into.
Psi's Jabber client lib (and ssl comms) have been adopted by KDE for their IM clients too, which is a nice bonus.
Looks like your experience is limited. Ever had coworkers more than a few cubicles away? I did, and instant messaging was quite a helpful tool. It is less intrusive and distracting than the telephone, especially if one has more than a single machine around. Doing software development, I use to have two machines on my desk, one for actual hacking and one for reading documentation, running tests, etc. -- and instant messaging.
Of particular importance to developers is the ability to easily exchange code snippets. Compare to reading them over the phone, or sending e-mail messages then waiting for a reply. IM gives instant access to coworkers' knowledge while making it easy to talk about technical matter that would be hard to express in voice.
And of course if you are serious about it you will allow people to make themselves unavailable.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
As far as RH going straight from 8->9
If you were at all familiar with RedHat versioning, you'd know that all revisions within a major version are binary compatible with each other, and major versions are not guaranteed to be binary compatible with each other. (Some may work fine, other binaries won't. Mostly this pertains to C++ apps, but in RH9, this pertained to anything that used threading.) RedHat decided that it was best for the distribution to move to a new threading architecture. It happened that this new threading system broke binary compatibility with RedHat 8.
As a result, consistent with RedHat's versioning policies, it was called RedHat 9.
I will admit that it does have a fringe marketing benefit, but the main reason for 9 was that it broke binary compatibility with RH8.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Anyone who has ever used Domino's document management tools or developed an application for Notes knows exactly what I mean. You have the ability to develop highly advanced applications, not just folders full of sticky notes (e.g. Exchange). You don't have filing cabinets full of sticky notes, do you? Why should your database?
The biggest disadvantage of Domino is the fact that developing for it is kind of its own little world. I'm looking forward to Domino R7's integration with WebSphere. But even until then, Domino gives you a document management development environment second to none.
The weird thing is that the feature that everyone looks at Domino most closely for, e-mail, is its weakest point. That's what comes from building e-mail around a document-mangement platform, instead of building document management around an e-mail platform.
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