SAN FRANCISCO – Sun Microsystems plans to expand its partner programs to embrace not only current ISVs, but the ISVs of tomorrow, said Juan Carlos Soto, vice president, marketing, Market Development, at the company’s annual JavaOne conference.
His rationale is simple: if Sun can influence a startup while it’s still young, with a platform it can service and sell, it will have a customer for the long haul. “You can’t get them when they’ve locked and loaded,” he said. “It’s very hard to make a big architecture change down the road.”
Sun Startup Essentials offers discounts on systems, storage and support to developers, as well as advice on configuring systems optimally for the developer’s products. Last week, said Soto, Sun added discounted hosting services to the mix. It is intended to help startups conserve cash, and to expand Sun’s reach to new customers. Soto said that the program, currently only available in the U.S., would be rolling out to other regions, beginning with rapid growth areas such as India and China, soon, although he could not provide a timeline.
Tony Iams, senior analyst for Rye Brook, NY-based Ideas International, noted, “Sun realizes that there are other platforms that are the path of least resistance for startups. Instead of going with Windows or Linux, it is trying to position itself as the default path.”
Soto says that, while in the short term it may be easier to deploy Windows or Linux for Web-based applications, long term, if the site succeeds, scalability may become an issue, one that a Sun/Solaris-based solution will not face.
“I’m not aware of anything exactly like this from other vendors,” said Iams. “Sun has a lot of experience in understanding the barriers developers encounter as they try to scale systems in a Web environment. I think their execution looks promising.”
Toronto-based mobile telecom infrastructure software supplier Redknee was one of the first companies to produce telecom services in Java, and vice president of marketing Jeff Popoff said that, at the time, the company was taking a major chance using the technology for telecom.
“We became involved in Sun Partner Advantage because we were looking for technical support and expertise,” he said. “It was critical that the operating system and Java evolve to meet our needs. We would stress the heck out of the platform.”
He looks on the collaboration agreement with Ericsson announced here as validation of his company’s early commitment. Sun and Ericsson will jointly develop an open source Java-based communications application server as part of the GlassFish project, with Ericsson contributing its SIP Servlet 1.0 compatible application server to the community.
Partners are critical to Jim McHugh’s business too. The vice president, software infrastructure marketing for Sun, said, “I’m very pro SIs – they’re the key to my business, both at a global level with companies like Deloitte and also with boutique guys working at a regional level. They bring relationships with a lot of customers.”
“The barrier Sun faces is that most users tend not to consider them,” said Iams. “Its challenge is visibility.” To address this, he said that Sun has hosted events for potential startups with innovative ideas, to try to get in front of them.
“Indications are that Sun is willing to make the investment to be the platform for the next generation of Web applications,” he said. “The problem is that people with the next great idea are coming from garages and dorm rooms, and those people tend not to think of big corporations like Sun. But the technology is there, the expertise is there, they are clearly making the investment. The challenge is making sure they are at the table and people are aware of them.”