Yesterday, Sun took its best shot at presenting itself as a bankable alternative to IBM, BEA, and Microsoft.

The big news is that Sun is announcing a free Platform Edition of its new Sun ONE Application Server 7--which is akin to a free developer edition, only you can build a commercial Web site on it. Sun's message from this day forward is that the app server should be considered part of the operating system. And when you get the Solaris 9 operating system, Sun will now throw in its Directory Server.

Grabbing market share with free stuff is nothing new. To me, the most impressive thing about the rollout was the way in which pumped-up Sun execs kept drawing attention to the big picture: What really counts today, they said, is the entire software suite--the portal server, the identity server, the integration server, the development environment--and how the whole ball of wax holds together and integrates with the outside world. That's exactly right. And when you consider Sun's complete software stack, including its new Sun ONE Studio development tools, the company makes a compelling case that it's a viable player, even though IBM, BEA, and Microsoft provide similar offerings.

But can Sun--with roughly an 8 percent share of the application server market--do anything more than nibble around the edges of the nearly 70 percent share that IBM and BEA hold? Not surprisingly, Sun Senior VP Stuart Wells thinks so. "Many corporations, although they're standardized on IBM or BEA, will swap," he said. "I know that to be true, because we've already had discussions with many organizations who've told us they're fed up with the costs." In addition, Wells thinks Sun can grow the J2EE market and grab a bigger portion of it through its hardware/software bundling, the free application server offering, and through professional services organizations that are looking to use free software in their own implementations.

Wells also touts the benefits of the Sun ONE Developer Platform, which was officially announced yesterday as well. This new offering will expose the functionality of Sun's suite of servers in a unified development environment, where developers can use Sun ONE Studio 4 (formerly Forte for Java) to build Web services, portlets, or identity-based apps--and use a new Connector Builder tool to create J2EE Connector Architecture adapters for easy application integration. With a library of Java blueprints and patterns plus sample Web services, both the Platform and the Studio are the strongest Sun offerings yet for Java developers. Sun will even thrown in a new UDDI server along with various Web services developer tools.

In fact, it's hard to think of a base Sun hasn't covered. But that doesn't ensure success.

Yesterday was Sun's all-out, teeth-gritting effort to convince the world--and itself--that it really is a software company, too. In truth, in a flagging hardware market, the company had little choice. All else being equal, the company's strong points are its Java leadership, operating system superiority, and 70 percent share of the directory server market--that latter item providing a springboard for delivering mass-customized portals and other services based on user identity. But is coupling these strengths with free software enough to make choosing the Sun platform a good gamble?

If you ask me, all yesterday's announcement did was buck up Sun's No. 3 position and stave off Oracle's renewed assault in the application server market. Free software won't vault Sun past IBM and BEA, although it could seduce enterprises that consider software licensing costs the root of all evil. Heck, I even think StarOffice will grab a few points of desktop market share.

But you have to look at the ship dates: The free Platform Edition of the app server won't ship until September, the Developer Platform won't arrive until the fourth quarter, and the Enterprise Edition of the application server (priced at $10,000 per CPU--half the cost of the previous version), which supports clustering, isn't due until the first quarter of 2003. And Sun is already late to the party.

You have to give Sun credit for its vision, which it has always had in abundance. And it's worth noting that Sun has one of the best and most popular portal servers out there. But you can't bet the farm on the product plans of a new software organization. (Sun ONE only recently rose from the ashes of iPlanet, the Netscape/Sun joint venture.)

By early next year, we'll have a better sense of whether Sun is cut out to be a top-tier middleware player. Sun can only hope that there's enough market share left to fight over by then.

Does Sun's elaborate vision--and free stuff--float your boat? Or have you already committed to other solutions? E-mail Eric or TalkBack below.

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