After months of buzz, Sun Microsystems (SUNW) is unveiling its much-vaunted Jini technology, a system that seeks to make connecting any computing device to a computer network as easy as plugging in a telephone.
Sun scheduled a press event Monday to announce that 35 companies -- from disk-drive makers like Seagate (SEG) and Quantum (QNTM) to consumer electronics giants Philips Electronics (PHG) and Sony (SNE) to printer behemoth Hewlett-Packard (HWP) -- are licensing the technology, which it hopes will be used in everything from printers to television set-top boxes to dishwashers.
Jini, which Sun announced last July, is software that Sun hopes will make computers and all kinds of devices much easier to use. Sun's Java programming language, which lets programmers write an application once to run on many systems, is the core of the Jini technology.
A Jini-enabled device works by announcing itself to the network, which will immediately be able to understand what kind of device was just plugged in, what kind of software drivers are necessary, and the capabilities of the device.
"That is the goal, to make it as simple and as intuitive as how you use your telephone and your cellphone," said Mike Clary, general manager for Jini.
Sun plans to offer Jini in a community source code model, similar to what it has done with the Java language. The code is free to software developers who are working in research or using Jini for their own internal deployment.
If a company has a commercial use of Jini, it will pay Sun a nominal licensing fee for the use of its Jini logo to cover the trademark costs of either 10 cents per unit or $250,000 per year, per product line.
Some of the companies are expected to have products incorporating Jini rather soon, such as Quantum, which is expected to have a Jini-ready disk drive this year. But analysts and industry executives said Jini is still in its very early stages in the new technology product cycle.
"This is a real immature marketplace," said Rod Smith, director of Internet technology at IBM (IBM). "Our joy is to participate to sort things out. ... There are parts of Jini that are in pretty good shape."
