7 Practical Ways to Web 2.0

In case you missed it, the World Wide Web commemorated its 15^th anniversary last month, on August 6. On that date in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN nuclear physics laboratory in Switzerland, posted the world's first public Web page, and helped to trigger the technological juggernaut that would change the world.

Now it's all about Web 2.0, and a second generation of rich, dynamic Web services built on secure open standards that enable sharing, participation, and collaboration while delivering the extreme performance and massive throughput demanded by global proliferation of the Internet.

If it took 15 years for Web 1.0 to reach maturity, how long will it take for IT organizations to develop and deploy systems that achieve the world-changing ideals of Web 2.0 ideals? In fact, the technologies and principles behind Web 2.0 are here today, and continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

To commemorate the Web's 15^th anniversary, Sun Inner Circle has assembled 7 Practical Ways to Web 2.0 — a collection of technologies and strategies available today that comprise a bona fide Web 2.0 system.

Building the Second-Generation Web
The next generation of the Internet borrows heavily from the first, and such Sun innovations as high-performance UNIX servers, Java technology, and the Solaris Operating System. Beginning with the go-live of www.sun.com in 1994, and through the dot-com boom years to today, Sun's commitment to innovation has played a crucial role in the Web's development and growth.

For a look at the Web's past and its future, check out this podcast with Sun Distinguished Engineer Radia Perlman and Tim Bray, Sun's director of Web technologies and co-inventor of XML. The Sun luminaries offer perspectives on peer-to-peer networks, the next-generation Atom Web editing protocol, and Sun's role in the transition to Web 2.0 in an interview with independent Web analyst Richard McManus for his popular ReadWriteWeb blog.

Perlman, known as the "Mother of the Internet" for her pioneering work in Web stability and security, is a leading innovator at Sun Labs, which notably commemorated its 15^th anniversary this summer along with the 15^th anniversary of the World Wide Web.

Sun's focus on innovation is reflected in an $8 billion investment in Sun Labs R&D over the past four years and has contributed to many of the technologies that comprise our 7 Practical Ways to Web 2.0. If you're ready to transition to Web 2.0, here's how you can get started today:

1) Try a New High-Performance Sun Fire Server
Sun makes it easy for you to test drive innovation with our Try and Buy program on Sun Fire servers with UltraSPARC or x64 AMD Opteron processors. You get a Sun Fire server to try risk-free for 60 days. If it doesn't work out, return it — we even pay the shipping.

For Web 2.0, try a new Sun Fire X4500 server (available soon under Try and Buy). The world's first hybrid data server delivers four-way x64 performance with 24 TB of storage of integrated storage. "[The Sun Fire X4500] is the Web 2.0 server," as Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media, put it.

Or check out the Sun Fire T2000 CoolThreads server. Its UltraSPARC T1 processor runs up to 32 concurrent threads on an eight-core processor to deliver the massive throughput required by growing Web 2.0 and application tier workloads.

2) Get the Latest Solaris 10 OS — Free for Download and Deployment
Sun is leading the way towards Web 2.0 paradigm of sharing and participation with no-cost downloads of the world's most advanced operating system. The latest version 6/06 further expands the incorporation of open source technologies with the PostgreSQL database, of one 188 open source software packages bundled with Solaris 10 OS.

With more than 5 million downloads worldwide, Solaris 10 OS is the ideal platform for Web 2.0, with advanced technologies such as Dynamic Tracing, Predictive Self Healing, Containers, and the ZFS file system that enable you to optimize your data center for the extreme performance that Web 2.0 demands.

3) Join a Sun-Supported Open Source Community
One of the hallmarks of Sun's support for Web 2.0 is its support for open source technologies — in fact, we've opened more lines of code than any other company. Get involved in one of these Sun-supported initiatives to learn from and contribute to the worldwide momentum of community-based development that's helping to drive the transition towards Web 2.0.

OpenSolaris.org: Its success has been amazing — 14,000 members, 33,000 downloads, 40,000 postings, and 30 user groups.

NetBeans.org: With more than 300,000 members and 8 million downloads, the community behind the NetBeans Java technology IDE is thriving.

OpenSPARC.net: Talk about radical. The new OpenSPARC initiative invites the world to "chip in" on CPU development, starting with Sun's multithreaded UltraSPARC T1 processor.

Linux on Sun: The new availability of Ubuntu/GNU Linux for UltraSPARC (as reported in this issue of Sun Inner Circle) is just the latest in Sun's expanding support for Linux.

4) Re-Engineer for the Service-Oriented Architecture
Web 2.0 is the service-oriented Web, and Sun's SOA technologies an help you accelerate the seamless delivery of Web services by eliminating isolated data silos and integrating legacy systems through open standards.

Next up — the Sun Java Composite Applications Platform Suite, giving you everything you need to develop and deploy an SOA platform.

5) Empower People and Liberate Systems, Securely
Web 2.0 means growing user communities as anywhere, anytime computing becomes more widely available both within an enterprise and around the world. And it demands that organizations more securely govern who has access to what information, and eliminate incompatibility among user systems by the adoption of open, standards-based technologies. Three key Sun technologies are available today to help you achieve these Web 2.0 ideals.

Sun Secure Global Desktop: One piece in Sun's stack of thin client solutions, Sun Secure Global Desktop Software lets you empower users with access to server-based applications accessible from any client.

Sun Identity Management Solutions: Sun's acclaimed portfolio of identity management solutions enables you to precisely govern who has access to which applications to improve your security and help ensure users have access to the information they need.

StarOffice Desktop Suite: Free standards are a foundation to Web 2.0, and they're a foundation the OpenDocument format on which Sun's StarOffice desktop suite is based. Why do free standards matter? CEO Jonathan Schwartz explains the very real implications in his popular blog.

6) Test Drive the Sun Grid Compute Utility
Web 2.0 demands a communications grid that enables continued growth in the pervasiveness, availability, and speed of the Internet and the delivery of services on demand. Sun offers a unique solution that gives you immense compute resources with the Sun Grid Compute Utility — now available in the U.S. for test drive, or licensing at just $1 per CPU/hour.

To learn how Sun Grid Compute Utility can help you get to Web 2.0, don't miss the mini-case study on Callidus Software's use of the Sun Grid in Bill Vass's article on SaaS in this Sun Inner Circle.

7) Join the Sun Developer Network
If you're building Web 2.0, you can get all the development tools, open source code, and community resources you need at the Sun Developer Network. With more than 2 million members and 170 message forums, SDN gives you a one-stop portal that covers the full breadth of development and deployment technologies that go into Web 2.0.

And the unique SDN Channel offers a virtual parade of Web 2.0 technologies, with how-to demos and downloads on such topics as Linux on Sun, SOA, mobile applications, community development, and enriching Web applications with AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

So there you have it. Web 2.0 builds on the success of Web 1.0 and continues the world-changing momentum triggered by Tim Berners-Lee and hundreds of other enterprising pioneers. Sun built many of the foundational systems in use in Web 1.0, and our tireless commitment to innovation is delivering the technologies that Web 2.0 needs to realize its potential as a secure, open, global ecosystem.

But you don't have to wait 15 years. Web 2.0 is here today. What are you waiting for?