Sun starts Java promotion drive

Sun is launching consulting services around its Java server software to advise companies how to adopt modern system designs.

The initiative, called SOA Path, offers services meant to help corporate customers build a service-oriented architecture (SOA), Joe Keller, Sun's vice-president of marketing for Java Web services and developer tools, said on Monday. The consulting will consist of recommendations, such as technical blueprints, for building applications around Sun's JES suite of products.

Sun will offer a suite of services, ranging from an upfront assessment to more expansive efforts to identify which applications will be earmarked for reuse as a shared service within a company.

Competitors IBM and BEA have already launched similar consulting initiatives around their respective Java server suites. Over the next several years, business customers are expected to adopt aspects of SOAs, which analysts expect to be an important sales driver for infrastructure software.

Keller said that Sun's SOA Path service will be relatively lightweight, in that the company's professional services organisation will provide a few consultants in an engagement that may last for as little as a month.

"We're going to take a very pragmatic approach and figure out which are their particular problems and incrementally attack them and not try to reinvent the entire corporation at once," Keller said.

For example, a company may want to simply take data from an existing application and make use of it in a different program, rather than write a new one from scratch.

SOA Path is part of Project Kitty Hawk, the name Sun uses for both product enhancements and services for building SOAs.

Keller said that its high-end consulting services address the "lifestyle" changes that SOA brings to a company and that can be more profound than the technology involved.

"Fostering reuse really does challenge organisations," Keller said. "You have to adapt and transform."