Sun unveils Java SE for business

SANTA CLARA, USA: Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the availability of Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) for Business, a new product subscription designed to more than double Sun's support periods for releases, provide faster access to technology updates and offer enterprise deployment features for customers.

In addition, Sun also announced a redistribution agreement so that ISVs, service providers and integrators can offer Java SE for Business to their customers.

"Java SE for Business was created based on the feedback Sun received from a large number of our customers and ISV's who requested we extend the amount of time that Sun provides updates for Java SE releases via a paid support offering. Customers and partners running Java applications on older release families now have a choice of either migrating to a newer release or subscribing to Java SE for Business to continue receiving critical reliability, availability and security updates, as well as new operating environment support for their existing applications," said Jeet Kaul, vice president, Client Software Group at Sun.

Java SE for Business is designed for customers looking for longer, more predictable support for the platform - up to 15 years per family. Sun will also continue to support the latest non-subscription release of Java SE, at no cost, and deliver three years of quarterly maintenance updates per release family. In addition, future releases of Java SE will continue to be developed under the General Public License version 2 (GPL v2) as part of the OpenJDK open source community at: http://openjdk.java.net/.

As part of the subscription service, Java SE for Business also offers customers faster access to mission critical reliability and security fixes through Java SE for Business Revisions. Customers will be able to get specific fixes that they request from Sun faster than ever before. In addition, Sun plans additional features for Java SE for Business including a new IT managed Java auto-update and integration with Sun xVM Ops Center. These features will enable IT managers to have greater visibility into Java software applications across their company, as well as increase their ability to manage these deployments.