Sun's rising Star to catalyse device revolution

1999-07-31

Things have moved on since the first reports of SUN Microsystems's acquisition of Star Division. It surely is too much to ask that the giant took our advice, but it would appear that our suggestion, that this was far more than a battle for office automation market share, was uncannily accurate.

In the article where we first commented on the acquisition, we put it in the context of Microsoft’s decision to move its policies from a PC-centric position to "great software.. on any device". Fair enough - the advent of better bandwidth, both inside and outside the corporation, coupled with the continued drive to push down TCO (promoting re-centralisation onto enterprise servers), inevitably points to a thin client future. Microsoft, as a software company, wants to reposition itself to take advantage of this new landscape, by selling operating systems and office software which support the thin client paradigm. Recent announcements concerning Office 2000, coupled with the existence of cut-down versions of the applications for handheld devices, reflect this.

And then, here came SUN Microsystems. SUN is a hardware vendor who has consistently used third party software to promote the sales of its platforms (remember the encyclopedia-like Catalyst catalogue?). Then, as now, SUN's main interest is in selling hardware: whilst conceding that it has lost the battle for the desktop (a battle which, as indicated by Microsoft's changing mission, is going away), SUN is concerting its efforts on server hardware. As a calculated move to increase server sales, SUN are to give the StarOffice software away - a move which (considering its high quality) may well make significant in-roads into Microsoft's market share, just as Linux and Apache before it.

Clearly, whilst Scott McNeally will undoubtedly derive pleasure from cocking a snoop at Microsoft's share of the desktop software market, this is not their main target. The future backdrop of IT, it is well recognised, is the Internet, which will be the communications medium for delivering all kinds of services to consumer and business alike. We would expect companies such as Yahoo and AOL to capitalise quickly on the free availability of the server-based version of the Star software, known as StarPortal, which will enable them to roll out word processing, spreadsheet and other facilities in addition to their existing email, scheduling and information services. This opens the door to use of set top boxes, handheld devices and even mobile phones for more than just web browsing: SUN stands to make money from the increases in centralised processing power that this new model suggests.

There are still some shortfalls in this approach. The issue of consumer bandwidth is still not resolved: even given StarOffice's modular approach, there will be an inevitable download overhead each time a new or updated module is required. Security is of equal concern: recent events concerning Microsoft's Hotmail service (see companion article) are unlikley to encourage individuals to give service providers access to their documents and spreadsheets. Even given these short term weaknesses, SUN's announcement is clearly a major step on the way to mass market adoption of a device-accessible, internet-centric IT world.

Oh and, by the way, I wrote this article using StarOffice, downloaded this morning as I was deciding what to write. One day all software will be this way.

(First published 31 July 1999)