“The traditional $300 software package is doomed, and in the
race to replace it with a service model Sun will triumph over
Microsoft, says Star Division founder Marco Boerries. Speaking in
London in his new capacity as a Sun VP* earlier today, Boerries
opened up on the company’s strategy for application service
provision and the forthcoming StarPortal software…”
“Sun bought Star Division, along with its StarOffice
productivity suite and StarPortal earlier this year, and Boerries’
division is a key component of the company’s strategy. The way Sun
sees it, he says, is that “the classical business model of a $300
application with a $200 upgrade every 18 months will be over soon,”
its demise triggered by the explosion of devices connected to the
net. He reckons that in three to five years there will be about a
billion of them…”
“StarPortal is going to go out to customers in December, and
Boerries expects live services to be kicking off by about April.
Microsoft will be pushing down a similar road, but he’s insistent
that Sun is much further ahead, and has substantial advantages.
Steve Ballmer started talking about putting Microsoft
applications on the Web shortly after Sun announced the StarOffice
purchase, and claimed MS had been working on it for two years but,
sniffs Boerries, that would make it the first time Microsoft hadn’t
talked about a product two years before it started developing
it…“