TOKYO (09-25-95) - A broad agreement between Toshiba Corp. and Sun Microsystems Computer Corp. announced today is likely to be the first of such deals bringing Sun's Java technology to a Japanese hardware vendor, a Sun official said today in Tokyo.
Under the deal, which covers a broad range of joint development projects, Toshiba will build mobile systems around the Java and Hot Java technology that will enable users to access and retrieve corporate information over the Internet, officials said.
But while Toshiba, which is a major Sun reseller in Japan, may help throw weight behind the Java technology, Sun is also drumming up support from other companies, said Larry Hambly, corporate executive officer at Sun, based in Mountain View, Calif. He described Japanese interest in Java as "phenomenal."
Indeed, a source close to Sun's Japan unit says the company is lining up a host of licensees for the technology, including telecom carrier NTT, game maker Sega Enterprises, Mitsubishi Electric and Minolta.
In coming weeks William Joy, Sun cofounder and the company's current vice president of research and development, will travel to Japan to pin down the partners, the source said.
The company hopes to sign up a host of licensees before next week's Telecom 95 in Geneva Switzerland, said Hambly. "We're trying to sign them up as fast as we can," he said.
The deal with Toshiba merges Sun's raw technology prowess with Toshiba's systems experience, said Hambly.
"We can bring the technology, and they can build the applications," he said. Toshiba's strengths in the area of mobile products "gives us a very special advantage in the marketplace," he said.
Introduced in May, the object-oriented Java technology spans two products: Hot Java, an Internet browser, and Java, an Internet programming language that enables developers to write platform-independent, distributed applications for the World Wide Web portion of the Internet.
The partners will likely build systems that incorporate the technology as well as use it in house. Also under the agreement, the partners will design information-on-demand/video-on demand (IOD/VOD) systems that run over Toshiba's ATM technology and employ an unnamed media server technology provided by Sun.
Hambly declined to disclose more but said that Sun will likely provide details on the server at Telecom 95, beginning next week in Geneva.
As part of the agreement announced today, Toshiba will release workstations and servers in the Japanese market based on Sun's 64-bit UltraSPARC RISC chip. The machines' release date has not been decided, but a Toshiba official said that it will likely follow Sun's rollout of products based on the chip by three to six months. Sun is expected to announce its first UltraSPARC products in November.
[Copyright 1995 IDG News Service, International Data Group Inc. All rights reserved.]