“Sun will pull a one-two punch on the corporate client
market over the next two weeks by announcing both software and
hardware moves to challenge the Wintel stronghold of commercial
desktops.
On Tuesday in New York, Sun is expected to announce the
acquisition of Star Division and its StarOffice 5.1 suite of
Java-based productivity applications and will add them to Sun’s
growing arsenal of “dot-com” products for ISPs, application service
providers (ASPs), and enterprises, according to sources.”
“The company will follow its Star acquisition with the
announcement of its latest play in the thin-client hardware market.
Twice knocked down in the thin-client market but not out of
contention, Sun on Sept. 8 will unveil a new ‘information
appliance’ that sheds the Java-only mentality of its previous
workstations.”
“Sources said Sun will position the new models as front ends for
ASPs, processing, and call center operations. New Mexico Mutual
Casualty is testing the appliances for claims processing. Litton
Data Systems, Bell Atlantic, British Telecommunications, and the
U.S. Navy’s San Diego-based software development unit are also beta
deployers. Those users declined interview requests.”
” ‘I’m excited about the possibility of Sun offering this as a
chunk of software that every appliance [server vendor] can offer.
That’s what they intend to do,’ said Kimball Brown, an analyst at
Dataquest…”