Selling Java By The SuiteSelling Java By The Suite

Hoping to gain ground in the Java industry it created, Sun Microsystems has reorganized its Java middleware stack into five suites and is offering them at a low annual subscription price. The move is aimed at undercutting middleware competitors such as IBM and BEA Systems Inc.

The Java Application Platform Suite includes an application server, Studio development tools, a Web server, and a portal server. The Identity Management Suite includes Sun's Identity Manager, Directory Server, Access Manager, and the application server. The suites will be priced at $50 a year per employee. Sun hopes they'll be especially attractive to small and midsize businesses.

Sun also revealed plans to provide grid-computing services for $1 per CPU hour and data storage of $1 per gigabyte per month in five data centers in North America and Scotland.