Sun Announces Product That Connects Java to Business Applications; By Incorporating Joe, Businesses Can Extend their Mission Critical Applications to the Private Intranet and Public Internet

Business Wire, March 26, 1996

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 26, 1996--As part of its Internet strategy announcement today, Sun Microsystems, Inc., introduced Joe(TM), a powerful new product written in Java(TM) that enables corporations to extend their sophisticated business applications onto their private intranets and the public Internet.

Joe connects Java applets running on any Java-enabled browser to business applications running on industrial strength corporate networks. The beta version of Joe will be made available to selected beta sites in the next thirty days. A beta version will be made generally available for download from Sun's homepage in June.

"Joe is the missing link. Together with Java and Solaris(TM) NEO(TM), Joe offers corporations an unparalleled architecture for developing, deploying and managing mission-critical applications across all areas of their private and public networks," said Steve McKay, vice president, Solaris Products Group, SunSoft, Inc., a Sun Microsystems business unit.

"Joe gives corporate developers the added advantage of allowing them to leverage their existing datasources and legacy applications for Intranet to Internet deployment."

Sun's Joe extends corporate computing onto the intranet and the Internet by providing direct connections from Java-based Web browsers to existing business applications and data. For developers, Joe is a simple addition to Java. Unlike HTML forms and CGI scripts that generate entirely new Web pages each time a request is made, Java applets with Joe do not re-load entire Web pages but simply send updated information as necessary, minimizing network traffic.

This means Joe is ideal for creating highly interactive applications on the Web. Since Joe is written entirely in Java, access to business applications is available from any platform supporting Java. With Joe, sophisticated and highly responsive applications can be deployed across a corporate intranet or the public Internet.

Joe is compliant with the Object Management Group's (OMG) Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and includes a downloadable Java Object Request Broker (ORB) and an OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL)-to-Java compiler. Joe supports communication with Solaris NEO, the premier integrated environment for developing, deploying and managing multi-tier client/server business applications based on the CORBA standard.

Joe also supports an early availability release of remote Java object communications using the CORBA ESIOP (Environment Specific Inter-ORB Protocols) standard. Joe will also support communication with other vendors' ORBs that follow the CORBA 2.0 IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol) specification. With its open architecture, Joe provides the necessary capabilities to unify conventional business applications, corporate intranet applications and public Internet applications, creating a more efficient corporate computing environment.

Joe will be made available to selected beta sites in April. A beta version will be made generally available for download from Sun's homepage in June. For general information regarding Joe, contact http://www.sun.com/sunsoft/neo/. For information regarding using Joe for Java to Java connections, contact http://splash.javasoft.com/pages/intro.html

With annual revenues of more than $6 billion, Sun Microsystems, Inc. provides products and services that enable customers to build and maintain open network computing environments including private corporate intranets and the public Internet. Widely recognized as a proponent of open standards, the company is involved in the design, manufacture and sale of products, technologies and services for commercial and technical computing.

Sun's SPARCTM workstations, multiprocessing servers, SPARC microprocessors, Solaris operating software and ISO-certified service organization each rank No. 1 in the UNIX industry. Java, Sun's platform-independent programming language, provides a comprehensive solution to the challenge of programming for complex networks. Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982, and is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. -0-

Note to Editors: Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Joe, NEO, Solaris and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and in other countries exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.

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CONTACT: GCI New York

Marie Alu, 212/546-1547 (Press/analyst)