Sun Microsystems this week will take the covers off its long-hyped Project Orion and Project Mad Hatter at the SunNetwork conference in San Francisco. To strengthen its position as a serious enterprise software player, the company is counting on a tightly integrated software set that leverages its Solaris OS at bargain-basement prices. Ironically, this approach seems to take a page from Sun's nemesis, Microsoft. "When you look at Orion, it's very analogous to what Microsoft has been saying over the years," said Stephen O'Grady, an analyst at RedMonk.
The Sun ONE Application server comprises the heart of Orion. Additional Orion components include a directory server, identity server, portal server, calendar server, messaging servers, and Sun Cluster software. Customers will have to wait, however, for more advanced offerings such as a high-availability application server, mobile access products, grid computing, and and peer-to-peer software, said Ingrid Van Den Hoogen, senior director of Java and strategic software marketing at Sun. These products will join the estimated 100 components Sun expects to add to its enterprise software stack in the future. Customers will also have to wait to hear Sun's application development story. According to Sun, the company will not be releasing its Java development tool, Project Rave, at the conference.
News source: InfoWorld
