Re: Sun adquire Star Division - Criadores do Star Office

[Aristides Tavares dos Santos]

Al�m do mais o StarOffice agora � de gra�a.

http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,41111,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.f

----- Original Message -----
From: Rodolfo Ricci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 1999 4:06 PM
Subject: Sun adquire Star Division - Criadores do Star Office


> Sun mounts attack on desktop
>
>   By Dana Gardner, Stacy Collett, and Stewart Deck
>   InfoWorld Electric and Computerworld
>
>   Posted at 12:37 PM PT, Aug 30, 1999
>             Sun will pull a one-two punch on the corporate client market
> over the next two weeks by announcing both
>   software and hardware moves to challenge the Wintel stronghold of
> commercial desktops.
>
>   On Tuesday in New York, Sun is expected to announce the acquisition of
> Star Division and its StarOffice 5.1 suite of
>   Java-based productivity applications and will add them to Sun's growing
> arsenal of "dot-com" products for ISPs,
>   application service providers (ASPs), and enterprises, according to
> sources.
>
>   In scooping up Star's technology, Sun acquires not only a line of
> downloadable thin-client Java productivity applications, but
>   a slew of multiplatform client applications.
>
>   The company will follow its Star acquisition with the announcement of
its
> latest play in the thin-client hardware market.
>   Twice knocked down in the thin-client market but not out of contention,
> Sun on Sept. 8 will unveil a new "information
>   appliance" that sheds the Java-only mentality of its previous
workstations.
>
>   The product is expected to be more robust than Sun's previous
> JavaStations and rely exclusively on Sun servers for their
>   applications. The biggest change for Sun, however, is that the appliance
> will run a variety of cross-platform applications,
>   not just Java applications.
>
>   And Sun's pending purchase of Star will provide the linchpin that makes
> its thin clients useful.
>
>   Star Division's office applications, called StarOffice, run on Windows,
> Unix, Solaris, Java, and other platforms. And
>   StarOffice is better than Java software at incorporating the formats of
> Microsoft Office applications such as PowerPoint,
>   Word, and Excel.
>
>   Industry observers said software has always been a critical issue with
> JavaStations.
>
>   "The early attempts at Java computers were doomed to failure because
> there just wasn't software that provided a
>   compelling case for end-users to use it," said Tom Austin, an analyst at
> Gartner Group, in Nashua, N.H.
>
>   Sun unveiled its first JavaStation in late October 1996. The $1,000
> first-edition machine had 8MB of RAM and ran
>   Java-based applications.
>
>   In March 1998, Sun announced the commercial availability of the retooled
> JavaStation at $699. Customers, including
>   AlliedSignal and PHP Healthcare, signed up for the devices, but overall
> sales were slow because of the lack of
>   applications.
>
>   Sources said Sun will position the new models as front ends for ASPs,
> processing, and call center operations. New
>   Mexico Mutual Casualty is testing the appliances for claims processing.
> Litton Data Systems, Bell Atlantic, British
>   Telecommunications, and the U.S. Navy's San Diego-based software
> development unit are also beta deployers. Those
>   users declined interview requests.
>
>   Some industry watchers said it might be difficult for Sun to penetrate a
> market in which Microsoft and Citrix Systems --
>   which provides the thin-client operating system to run Microsoft
> applications -- are entrenched. Nevertheless, the timing of
>   Sun's thin-client announcement is likely intended to detract from
Citrix'
> iForum user's conference on the same day in
>   Orlando, Fla.
>
>   Sun will have trouble "unless they have a specific target market that
> will find their technology extremely useful very
>   quickly," said Dave Friedlander, an analyst at Giga Information Group,
in
> Cambridge, Mass.
>
>   Others said opportunities for Sun will extend beyond their own thin
> clients.
>
>   "I'm excited about the possibility of Sun offering this as a chunk of
> software that every appliance [server vendor] can
>   offer. That's what they intend to do," said Kimball Brown, an analyst at
> Dataquest, in San Jose, Calif.
>
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