Sun Microsystems has revised the direction of a project to upgrade its integration server, a move that indefinitely postpones the product's inclusion in the Java Enterprise System (JES) software suite, a Sun executive said.
Solution providers said the integration server's absence is a significant hole in JES, the first version of which is due in December. The suite includes an application server, portal, identity management server and other software for building and deploying enterprise-scale Java applications.
"At this point, I really think Sun should look to buy a J2EE-compliant integration server if [its own] isn't forthcoming quickly," said Marc Maselli, president of Back Bay Technologies, a solution provider in Needham, Mass.
Maselli said the lack of a solid integration product in JES could hinder customers' adoption of the software stack, especially since Sun's chief competitors in the space,IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems and Oracle,already ship integration software.
Sun's Project Ganymede, first reported by CRN in May, aimed to combine elements of the Sun ONE Integration Server B2B Edition and the Sun ONE Integration Server EAI Edition with functionality from iPlanet Process Manager, which Sun bought from Netscape. The goal of that project, which originally was to be completed by the end of this year, was to create J2EE-compliant integration software based on Sun's app server.
Roger Nolan, senior director of marketing for integration products at Sun, said the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company changed the focus of Ganymede because engineers were troubled by the lack of code portability among integration products currently on the market.
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