(June 10, 2003) - The top tier of Sun Microsystems' Software Group was mobilized at the opening General Session of this year's JavaOne conference and expo - and that word "mobilized" is chosen advisedly, because Sun's vibrant and vigorous vision for the next huge wave of worldwide expansion for Java, and thus the next wave of professional opportunity for Java developers, involves mobility, mobility, and more mobility.
This was the clear message of the morning here in San Francisco, at the eighth JavaOne. In a major departure from the custom and practice of the previous seven years, the keynote address on Day One was allocated not to Scott McNealy but to the EVP of Sun's Software Group, the charismatic Jonathan Schwartz.
Introduced by Sun's Chief Researcher, John Gage, Schwartz promised to give the jam-packed keynote hall a sense of what gets him, as he termed it, "totally pumped" about Java.
Java, Schwartz reminded the audience, is in not just 90% or even 95% of the Fortune 500 companies? it?s in 100% of the Fortune 500 companies. Even Microsoft, he noted, had now joined the international Java community by dint of acquiring PlaceWare and folding it into its newly-hatched Real Time Collaboration Group. "We welcome Microsoft into the Java family," Schwartz added? as if he truly meant it.
"Who'd have envisioned we'd have this level of penetration: servers, clients, smartcards, robots - it?s incredible," Schwartz declared, warming now to his theme.
"The majority of Web services that are built today are going to be built with Java. ?Half a billion desktops are running Java? it's behind the scenes, on news sites, in the ads?"
Schwartz believes that it's high time the PC industry started looking at what's going on in the wireless space, where 22 handset manufacturers now produce Java-enabled phones and 53 carriers are deploying Java services to about 100 million subscribers.
"The ring tone industry alone is a $1.6 billion business in Europe," he said, "and we're on target to add a quarter of a billion Java-enabled handsets: what a phenomenal business opportunity.. talk about volume, we've got it coming out of our ears."
"Where else is Java?" he asked, rhetorically, so that he could introduce for the first time the Word of the Week so far as this JavaOne is concerned: everywhere.
"If it's on the Web and you want it to be doing something interesting? it's going to be running Java. If you have a Visa smart card, you have a Java Card, if you live in Belgium and you're over the age of 12, you have a Java Card? "
Java is what allows you to authenticate Web services, Schwartz noted, before drawing attention to the week's big announcement of how corporate-computing rivals Sun and Intel will henceforth be working jointly to develop more powerful computer systems for consumer gadgets using Java in combination with Intel's wireless processor technology.
