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Sun radiant over Jini magic in mobile networks

Mobile-crazed Japan viewed as huge Jini market

By Michael Drexler and Rob Guth, IDG News Service, 08/20/99

July 13, 1999 -- One of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s top engineers in Yokohama, Japan today positioned his company's Jini distributed computing architecture as the magic formula to fuse the freedom of mobile devices with the power of networks.

The message holds particular relevance in mobile-crazed Japan where on-the-go high schoolers already order tickets, send e-mail, and play games over their cell phones.

"The world where we are moving to is one where devices move around," said Jim Waldo, distinguished engineer at Sun, speaking at the Java Developer Conference 99 Tokyo here today. "We need to stop thinking about networks as statically placed machines, but as networks that can also move around."

In Sun's view, the future will offer a wireless community of mobile devices and peripherals that will need some way to talk to each other, Waldo said. The way they speak will be Jini, an architecture written in Sun's Java programming language enabling disparate kinds of devices, such as hard drives, printers, and mobile phones, to communicate easily over a network.

When a Jini-enabled device, such as a digital camera, is connected to a network, it sends out a message announcing itself and requesting services from other devices on the network. Another Jini-enabled devices, for instance, a printer, will "see" the message on a kind of virtual bulletin board, and send a message back offering its services. That return message will include data on how the printer is configured and what it needs to be activated. Devices never need to be configured to the network and they can be freely connected or disengaged from the network at any time, Waldo explained.

But for Sun to turn the Jini vision into reality, the company will probably require a strong vote of confidence in the technology from the Japanese developers and hardware makers attending the Java conference this week. Many of the attendees are the world's leading makers of the devices Sun wants to "Jiniize."

Though few vendors have disclosed specific details on their Jini development efforts, several Japanese electronics and computer makers are working with the technology, including Fujitsu Ltd., Sony Corp., Toshiba Corp., Seiko Epson, and NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT DoCoMo).

An official at Sharp Corp. said today that his company is working with several partners, including the Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Co. Ltd., on a system for the insurance industry that will enable Sharp's mobile devices to access data over a Jini-based network. The work should be completed by October, the Sharp official said, but he didn't provide further details.

Sun's Waldo emphasized the importance of mobile technologies in growing Jini, stating simply that it comes down to numbers. "There are more mobile phones sold today than there are computers sold," he said.

Some observers predict that in Japan the Jini technology will first appear in mobile phones. Japan is already an advanced market for mobile technology, with leading vendors here rushing out phone-based electronic commerce services. Sun argues that Jini will enhance those services.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.