Slicing Project Onion

At the core of the company's effort to reinvent enterprise computing is Project Orion, an ambitious move to bundle a complete stack of middleware with the operating system. The effort might be more aptly called "Project Onion," given all the layers that need to be peeled back in order to understand the implications of what Sun is attempting to implement.

In short, Sun hopes to become a major force in software by essentially eliminating the middleware market. Its executives argue that all the costs associated with middleware software are holding back the adoption of enterprise computing applications, and that Project Orion will make it more attractive for IT organizations to deploy the next generation of distributed computing applications.

Furthermore, Sun executives argue that pricing for this software should be based solely on the number of corporate users accessing the system, rather than trying to derive additional revenue through fees charged to customers that may need to access an application. For example, a bank that offers services to customers over an extranet would only be billed for software based on its actual number of employees.

Given the lower cost of this enterprise computing model, Sun is likely to get a fair amount of attention once it delivers. But given the economics of this industry, it's unclear what kind of reception it may actually receive. Within IT organizations, there are plenty of people with vested interests in incumbent application server and database platforms. Embracing the Sun model outlined in Project Orion would result in a considerable loss of clout. Similarly, there are solution providers that have heavily invested in products from IBM, Microsoft, BEA and Oracle, and Sun's theory that lower costs will be made up through increased sales volumes may ring hollow with them in this economy.

Whatever happens, Sun's Project Onion is likely to make people cry once they cut into it. What's unknown is whether it will generate tears of joy or rage.

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