Sun Revs New Version Of Java Enterprise System

JES 5 Base, priced at $100 per employee, per year, includes a collection of products aimed at easing enterprise Java deployments, including application, directory, messaging, Web and portal servers. Sun offers two add-ons, priced at $50 each annually per employee: Sun Java System Identity Manager and Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite.

Sun first released JES three years ago to address the middleware needs of Java users. The system now has 1.3 million subscribers.

"We focused on all the work people in the IT departments were really tired of doing," said Jim McHugh, Sun's vice president of software infrastructure. "The idea was to make the [Java] buying process and decision easier for the customer."

Customer feedback persuaded Sun that buyers wanted the option of picking up components of the suite piecemeal, so the company has worked to make JES a modular system. JES 5 brings the components up to speed with the latest versions of standards and software, including Sun's Java Enterprise Edition 5.

Sun's development focus for JES now is to expand the add-on feature set.

"We've hit a level where we've got the monitoring framework, the installer and the core-level integration solid," McHugh said. "From here on out, we'll be doing much faster releases, putting features in. We have more flexibility and opportunity to take advantage of what's going on in open source."