Sun looks for partners in per-user licensing

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Sun looks for partners in per-user licensing

By Robert McMillan

IDG News Service, 11/04/03

At its SunNetwork user conference in Berlin next month, Sun plans to announce the first independent software vendors that have signed up to distribute their software along with Sun’s Java Enterprise System middleware and Java Desktop System software.

When it unveiled a per-employee licensing model for its Java Enterprise System middleware and Java Desktop System software last September, Sun claimed that the switch to an annual per-employee licensing fee would simplify its customers’ software license management. Sun also said that it planned to release all of the individual pieces of software within these two suites in well-integrated quarterly updates, thus simplifying the management and upgrading of its products.

Now it appears that the company plans to include third-party software in its regular updates and per-user licensing plans. According to Stuart Wells, Sun’s senior vice president of market development, the Mountain View, Calif., company has been quietly working since September to sign up partners for its two software suites.

Though Sun declined to name any of the ISVs that has signed, the company is in discussions with two types of software vendors: infrastructure software providers such as Veritas and Vignette, and application vendors such as Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys. “At this particular time, we’ve got a lot of ISV interest in terms of the pricing model,” Wells said.

Wells confirmed that the company had already signed up more than one ISV. “We’ve got a couple of big ones, and then a bunch of little ones (signed up),” he said.

Tighter integration with third-party software will help adoption of the Java Enterprise System, said Stephen O’Grady, an analyst with Red Monk LLC., an industry research firm in Bath, Maine. “If you’re going to be serious about being a platform player and being essentially the de facto standards within enterprises, it is important that you are playing nicely with the enterprise applications that are out there,” he said. “If they could get … some of the ISVs to sign on to the model and adapt some of the practices, it would be very significant,” he said.

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