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Q & A
Sun/Microsoft Q&A with Greg Papadopoulos
Friday, May 13, 9:00 AM PT
Q: Why are Sun and Microsoft working together? What does
this
alliance really mean for customers out there in the real world?
A: It was a matter of both companies coming to grips
with the reality
that each of our developer platforms (Java and .NET) are going to be
around for a long time, and that for the sake of our customers, we'd
better make them interoperate a bit better. More often than not, our
customers develop in both environments, and the incompatibility
between our platforms was causing those customers a lot of headaches
and lot of extra time and money to resolve. For both Sun and
Microsoft, the primary focus of the relationship is customer
satisfaction.
Q: What can customers expect to see out of the relationship?
A: Let me start by telling you what customers WON'T see
out of the
relationship, and go from there. I want to make it clear that this
alliance is not about building a single, massive .NET-Java software
stack. Instead, it's about finding out where those stacks touch one
another and making sure that those interfaces are optimally engineered
on both sides. And those touch points extend from the very lowest
level of hardware and virtual machines all the way up through systems
and network management.
Q: What are some of the focus areas for both companies in
this joint
effort?
A: A primary area of focus is on identity within the
enterprise.
There are two entirely different directory structures that we're
working with here between Microsoft's Active Directory and Sun's LDAP
directory server. And this permeates all the way up through Internet
single sign-on, Web services standards, common systems management, and
information rights management.
Q: You've been working together for a year now - what
progress has
been made?
A: We've made a number of significant announcements
recently. In
April, at the Microsoft Management Summit, we discussed how Sun's N1
technology and Microsoft's dynamic systems initiative are working
together. Basically, we agreed on a set of Web services standards for
the communication of management information within the management
environment. More recently, we had a major rollout of Internet and
Web single sign-on initiatives. In a nutshell, we resolved and
aligned what Microsoft was trying to accomplish with Passport and the
WS-Federation with what we've been doing with the Liberty Alliance.
So, we've agreed upon a way to enable single sign-on to the Internet
(whether through a .NET service or a Java Enterprise System service),
and federate across those platforms based on service-level agreements
and/or identity agreements between those services. That's a major
milestone.
Q: So, is Microsoft now the big Sun ally?
A: I want to make it clear: Sun and Microsoft are going
to continue
to compete like crazy. But, first and foremost, we want to keep our
customers happy, and that means providing superior products that
interoperate easily with their existing environments.
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