Sun
In The News: New Java
Tools Coalition;
Changes In N1 Strategy
New
Java Tools Coalition
Sun has been working hard
in the last year to make Java more visible and more usable.
Millions of developers use the platform/language and tens of
millions of devices (including many embedded devices such as
telephones and smart cards) are Java-based.
First There Was Eclipse
Creating
interoperable tools to support Java has long been an issue and in
2001 Borland, IBM, Merant, QNX Software Systems, Rational Software,
Red Hat, SuSE, TogetherSoft, and Webgain formed Eclipse.org. to
provide a platform for tool integration based on an open platform,
open standards and the open source model.
Additional members now include Sybase, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP,
Oracle, SAP, the OMG, Ericsson, and Intel plus 26 others.
The point of
Eclipse was to create an open source IDE environment for Java that
was as easy and friendly for developers as Visual Studio is for
Microsoft developers.
Eclipse has
been well accepted in the Java community, with over 18 million
download requests. Over
the past two years, the
Eclipse open projects have delivered two major versions and a dozen
platform releases, culminating in the current Eclipse release
R2.1.2. In October, 2003, early builds of Eclipse R3 became
available. Downloads are available without charge from http://www.eclipse.org.
Now
Are There Two? The Java Tools Community (JTC)
Sun
has never participated in Eclipse, claiming that it would not have
an equitable role (its usual complaint in Java and standards groups
where it sees itself with less than enough control).
Now
Sun has joined with Oracle, BEA Systems, SAP, SAS, and nine others
(five are customer/advisors rather than Core (Vendor) Members), to
attempt to extend Java’s reach by enhancing its toolability.
The newly formed JTC plans to focus on (1) maximizing the
toolability of current and new JSR’s (Java Specification
Requests); (2) insuring the interoperability of Java development
tools and extensions through the advancement and proposal of
design-time standards; and (3) facilitating communication
across the entire design-time community.
We’d guess that item 3 is completely non-controversial and
it is item 2 that is most likely to cause collisions with Eclipse
activity.
Sun and its
partners see the JTC as a kind of extension of the JCP (Java
Community Process), a place where customers, tool vendors, and
developers, can meet and exchange ideas.
That’s a good idea, but it isn’t a substitute for
Eclipse. That’s
because Eclipse is about creating actual open source IP and the JTC
has stated that there will be no IP produced as part of its agenda.
Both Sun and
IBM see little overlap between the goals of Eclipse and the JTC;
they would rather look on them as complimentary activities. This is born out by the overlapping membership (those who
belong to both Eclipse and JTC) of many tool vendors – but note
that Sun, IBM, and Borland are not among those overlapping members.
Borland
says it might join the JTC later; it thinks it’s too soon to tell
whether it could play a worthy role.
Sun
obviously doesn’t want to join Eclipse (perhaps as an extension of
its ongoing tug-of-war with IBM over just who should control Java).
IBM’s
Sutor has stated that with 56 members and a product nearing its
third release, Eclipse is a strong competitor for Microsoft’s Open
Studio and this focus should be maintained.
He doesn’t want to dilute it by splitting the IBM focus
between Eclipse and JTC. That
seems to mean that IBM isn’t going to join the JTC.
(But Sutor points out that Eclipse will eventually be an
independent organization and that it could, if it found it
appropriate, then decide to support JTC itself.
Or JTC could become part of the JCP (see below) and then IBM
and Eclipse would be supporting JTC anyway.)
We’d
guess that both of these activities will exist side-by-side but that
a Java activity without IBM support is less exciting.
No doubt Sun feels the same way about Eclipse, but its
longevity and apparent success so far might tell Sun something about
the fact that Java has done exactly what Scott McNealy once told me
Sun hoped it would do: take
on a life of its own, separate from Sun. Perhaps, over time, it is the JTC and the JCP that will
coalesce, separate from Sun’s ownership and protection, and set
Java off on its own, as the powerful development environment it has
already become.
Changes In N1 Strategy
If
you’ve been following the Virtual Computing software market (see
our October 27 article and Charts http://www.wohl.com/wa03-90.htm
), you know that every major systems vendor has asserted a play in
the market for on demand/utility/adaptive enterprise/you name it
computing. We were
quick to note that all offerings are not created equal and our
charts make that abundantly clear.
Some vendors come to market with big portfolios of existing
software; others are relative newcomers to the space.
All are adding additional software categories through
acquisition and integration as well as internal development, but
some are likely to get there faster than others.
In
some sense, it all depends on where you started.
So
we were a little startled to read an article in CNet.News.com on
December 23, 2003 which implied that Sun would get to a lot of its
offering by creating, over the next 12-18 months a set of API’s
that would allow systems management vendors to connect to N1.
We thought it was supposed to work the other way around.
That is, we thought Vendors like IBM, HP, and Sun who were
offering to run the show, were also offering to do the heavy
lifting.
We
were particularly concerned by the implication of that article that
no one was offering to provide much heterogeneous management anyway
and wouldn’t for five years or more, so what Sun was planning to
do was probably a great idea. (Read
the article yourself at http://news.com.com/2100-7784-5130771.html.)
So we did a little checking with some of Sun’s competitors.
IBM
IBM
offered us two ways of looking at the problem.
Systems
Management And Middleware:
IBM agrees that standards for integration between virtualized
resources and the technology that manages them is indeed needed, but
believes that between OGSA (Grid Standards) and where the DMTF will
be headed with data center topology that ought to be accomplished
sooner than 5 years.
IBM
notes that Sun seems to be thinking of N1 as an extension of
Solaris, an operating system that could be leveraged by other
software, devices, etc. such that the virtualization and
provisioning are built into it. In that case, providing a
"toolkit and APIs" makes sense, just like they would need
to do for a regular OS. We will do that for the IBM platforms too,
but much more around OGSA standards and workflows to manipulate
orchestration and provisioning.
However,
if an extension of the OS is the only way this gets done AND it's
not based on open standards, then attaching yourself to N1 is a
proprietary activity, and you must do it differently for the other
platforms. In that case, IBM would suggest that a better option is
to go with a platform independent middleware approach to this
(that's one of the IBM choices) or use platforms that use open
standard ways to allow people to attach to it (with virtualization
inside). IBM will do this as well.
Using
Open Standards:
IBM states that their On Demand efforts are focused on enabling
customers to integrate their business processes end-to-end across
their company and with key partners, suppliers and customers. To
achieve involves managing data center equipment and products
provided by a variety of vendors as a single, unified system. This
integrated infrastructure becomes the computing "utility".
The technologies used to integrate and manage the IT infrastructure
need to be based upon open, standard interfaces and tools. This
means that the broadest range of equipment and products can be
utilized in the infrastructure. IBM says that this
evolutionary approach protects customers' investments versus “rip
and replace" proprietary implementations. Software
development kits (SDK) that support proprietary implementations will
attract a limited number of equipment and systems management
vendors, usually those that are already within the sphere of
influence of the SDK provider. Open, standards-based
implementations are more appealing to a broader group of independent
equipment/systems management vendors.
Examples of open, standard interfaces currently available and being
used as foundations for technologies that integrate and manage IT
infrastructures are:
Open Grid
Services Architecture (OGSA) standard from The Globus Alliance and
the Global Grid Forum (GGF). OGSA is an open set of standards
and protocols that enable communication across heterogeneous,
geographically dispersed environments. The Globus
Toolkit, and the IBM implementation of it, the IBM Grid Toolbox,
provides tools to developers to create products that assist in
managing and deploying grids.
Application
Response Measurement (ARM) standard from the Open Group. The
Application Response Measurement (ARM) API defines function calls,
which can be used to instrument an application or other software for
transaction monitoring. It provides a way to monitor business
transactions, by embedding simple cells in the software, which can
be captured by an agent supporting the ARM API. The calls are used
to capture data that allows software to be monitored for
availability, service levels, and capacity.
For more information, go
to: http://www.opengroup.org/products/publications/catalog/c807.htm
Common
Information Model (CIM) from the Distributed Management Task
Force (DMTF). CIM is a model for describing overall management
information in a network / enterprise environment. CIM is comprised
of a Specification and a Schema. The Specification defines the
details for integration with other management models, while the
Schema provides the actual model descriptions.
For more information go to: http://www.dmtf.org/standards/cim/
The Point
Now keep in
mind that IBM supports its own systems management software (Tivoli)
and that IBM platforms are all supported by the other major systems
management software vendors (CA Unicenter, HP OpenView, et al).
IBM is, of course, supporting multiple vendors’ platforms
for some of the products it’s shipping now, but there is not yet a
complete interconnection scheme that includes every vendor’s
platform and every IBM product.
IBM will get there (complete interconnection and the
possibility of a fully automated system) through a combination of
IBM efforts to support other platforms, open standards, and IBM
middleware running on top of other vendors’ platforms.
HP
HP’s
response was quite straightforward.
They already have a UDC (Utility Data Center), which supports
HP
Unix, Windows, Linux & Sun (UE420's) in Ft.Collins, operated
under a single point of control - the utility controller software.
That is real today. Additionally, HP has UDC's running both XP &
EMC storage under single management control. Moreover, HP has the
same single point of control managing other vendors' appliances,
including firewalls, switches & load balancers from multiple
vendors.
To
achieve a 'generic' plug and play of a single point of management
control for any combination of devices is probably still some time
away. Maybe it is 5 years.
So,
the takeaways here are that vendors with big portfolios that include
lots of middleware and systems management software will have a very
different approach than a vendor offering mainly Virtualization and
Provisioning (however successfully), who will want to attach to
others Systems Management software – and is hoping that they will
do some of the work.
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