Sun Tweaks JES, Creating Suites and Raising Prices

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It has been almost a year since Sun Microsystems rolled out its Java Enterprise System (JES), the collection of its middleware, file system, and clustering software that rides on top of Solaris. JES is noteworthy as much for its subscription-based pricing model as it is for the core technology that Sun has been selling as if it were one giant product. Sun is this week announcing different versions of JES, and raising the price of the full product, too.

JES is an amalgam of homegrown Sun and acquired Netscape server software, including Web servers, identity managers, J2EE application servers, and other middleware. Thus far, it has only been available on Sun's own Solaris Unix and the open source Linux operating system, but last summer, Sun said it would offer the program on Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX Unix variant as well as Microsoft's Windows platform. In recent weeks, Sun's president, Jonathan Schwartz, has been razzing IBM about not supporting JES on its AIX Unix variant, and sources within IBM tell me that it will be a cold day in Armonk, New York, when Big Blue helps Sun take on IBM's own WebSphere middleware alternative to JES on its own AIX platform. Much, much colder than it has been up there in recent weeks.

The JES software is not sold based on the number of seats accessing the code or the number of servers or processors on which the various elements of the code run, but on the number of full-time employees at the company--with no restrictions on their usage. For the past year, Sun has been selling the JES suite for $100 per employee per year, and in developing countries, Sun shaved the price down to $50 per employee per year. The low pricing of the JES suite has been particularly attractive conceptually, since no other software vendor owns a complete middleware stack that has been completely written off (from a bookkeeping sense, not in a development sense) and therefore can be sold at a very low price. JES packaging and pricing is a no-brainer for any customer thinking of using a substantial portion of the Sun stack, which is why Sun has over 425,000 seats at 350 customer sites under JES licenses. Still, Sun is in a distant fifth position behind JBoss, WebSphere, BEA Systems's WebLogic, and Oracle's Application Server and even with innovative pricing, Sun's shipments have slowed in the past quarter.

This is one reason why Sun has revamped the way JES is packaged and priced this week as part of the Network Computing 05Q1 announcements. Another is that Sun has discovered that a one-size-fits-all marketing approach is not working perfectly as it takes on the established players in the middleware market. So Sun is creating five new JES sub-suites, which target specific uses and sub-markets and that carry a lower $50 per employee per year price tag.

As part of the announcement, Sun is rolling in its new Java Application Server 8.1, which is compliant with Java 2 Enterprise Edition and included with the Java Enterprise System as well as the sub-suites, which are called Java Enterprise System Suites. This application server, by the way, is capable of installing itself in Solaris container partitions (new with Solaris 10) and using that technology to make resilient, virtual application servers.

The Java Enterprise Edition (which is technically in Release 3) now includes Sun's Java Studio Enterprise compilers as well as its Java Studio Creator integrated development environment. Up until now, these have been licensed separately, but starting this week JES includes these programming tools. Because of this added function, Sun is raising the price of JES from $100 per employee per year to $140 per employee per year. (Sun is maintaining that $100 price with a special promotion until April 1. No fooling.) That much higher number suggests that Sun set its initial price too low and that it has had to discount significantly to generate sales for the JES model. (Think about the ratio of programmers to employees at most organizations, and you can see that a 40 percent price increase is pretty steep.) However, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president, said this week that the price was not the barrier, and instead put the onus on the idea that companies would have to commit to use the JES product across the entire organization. A smaller suite for less money that hits a specific need right now is an easier sell.

There are five JES Suite and they each cost the same $50 per employee per year to license:

* The Java Application Platform Suite includes the Java System Application Server, Web Server, Portal Server, Portal SRA and Portal Access add-ons, Java Studio Enterprise, and Studio Creator IDE.

* The Java Availability Suite includes the Sun Cluster high availability software, plus agents to make use of it and the Java Studio Enterprise and Studio Creator IDE. In effect, after having poured this software into the full JES suite, Sun is ripping it back out again.

* The Java Communications Suite is a groupware, collaboration, and instant messaging server that includes Java System Messaging Server, Calendar Server, Instant Messaging (which can synchronize with Microsoft's Outlook), plus the two development tools.

* The Java Identity Management Suite merges Java System Identity Manager, Access Manager, Directory Server Enterprise Edition, and the development tools.

* The Java Web Infrastructure Suite is aimed at infrastructure workloads lurking out there on the network, and includes Java System Web Server, Directory Server Enterprise Edition, Access Manager, Web Proxy Server, Application Server Standard Edition, and the development tools.

The full Java Enterprise System, Release 3, will be available in early March, as will the new suites. Sun is now offering the software on Solaris 9 and 10 on both Sparc and X86 platforms as well as on HP-UX servers, Linux, and Windows.