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Kim Polese talks Java

JavaSoft's former `one-person marketing department' describes why Sun `gave away the crown jewels' of Java, identifies ripe markets for today's Java developers, and discusses Java's future.

By Michael O'connell, JavaWorld.com, 04/01/96

A year ago, few people had heard of Sun's Java programming language. Today Java's popularity appears boundless. One would think that such a sudden transformation would require not only a top-notch product, but an extensive advertising, marketing, and distribution campaign. Yet Sun simply relied on the Internet, Java's technical merit, and the efforts of one Kim Polese.

Kim Polese

Polese came to Sun from Intellicorp, a company offering expert system application frameworks. After several years as the product manager for C++ in Sun's developer products unit, she moved over to FirstPerson, Sun's "spinout" group that was working on what was then known as Oak, a computer language destined for settop boxes and interactive TV. Within a few months, Polese had co-authored a plan designed to focus instead "on where the real set of programmers and where the real information superhighway was and is: the network, the Internet, the intranet, and the desktop."

In this interview with JavaWorld, Polese recalls how she acted as a one- person marketing department for JavaSoft, helping transform Java's business model, choose a new product name, lowering barriers to acceptance, signing licensees, creating a brand identity ... in short, making the Java technology "sexy." The result: the Java brand has eclipsed all of Sun's products, and perhaps even Sun itself, which is "aligning around Java." The Java wave has not yet crested, and has attracted everyone from Netscape and Silicon Graphics to IBM and Microsoft. While Java creator James Gosling apologizes for all the hype, Polese points to all the attention as evidence of her success.

Herein, Polese also sheds light on areas ripe for Java development today (such as the MIS and financial arenas), identifies likely revenue sources for these key areas, offers a vote of confidence to JavaSoft sans Polese, and predicts Java's future.

This interview took place in February 1996, on Kim Polese's last day with JavaSoft. She's joined Arthur van Hoff, Sami Shaio, and Jonathan Payne to form a yet-to-be-named startup company focusing on Java.

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JavaWorld: Tell us how you came to join what's now known as JavaSoft, and what you've done there.

Polese: I came to Sun seven years ago, and I was the product manager for C++ over in SunPro, now called DevPro [SunSoft Developer Products]. Prior to that, I worked at a company called Intellicorp, and they were doing expert system application frameworks, There I was consulting, helping people build applications. So my background is technical, computer science and biophysics at UC-Berkeley. The move to marketing and to the business side of things came when I came to Sun and became the product manager for C++.

The background in C++ was very good for moving into the job that I'm in right now. I came to FirstPerson, which was the spinout company [dealing with Java technology] two-and-a-half years ago, the end of summer, 1993, to be the product manager of Oak, now called Java. The C++ background [helped] because it's a programming language and development environment background, and [focused on] the audience that we need to appeal to with Java.

 

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