by Mary Smaragdis

January 6, 2000 -- Sun Microsystems' CEO Scott McNealy raises the curtain on the ".com Home" -- the household of the future -- at the 2000 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. The home, which showcases networked consumer products and services by Sun and its partners, gives attendees a glimpse into what their home environments of tomorrow will look like.

The .com Home contains a broad range of innovative household appliances, products, technologies and services based on Java^TM and Jini^TM technologies. The exhibit demonstrates Internet-enabled solutions that incorporate Sun^TM technologies from leading industry partners and manufacturers in the wireless, interactive television and home gateway markets.

The .com Home highlights networked products and services in a kitchen, interactive entertainment center, home control and security system and office setup. Sun's .com Home demonstrates how dozens of different consumer appliances and services can interact seamlessly into a smart home network, offering a wealth of consumer conveniences.

This year's Consumer Electronics Show features a keynote address on Thursday, January 6 2000, at 4:00 p.m. Las Vegas time by Scott McNealy (Webcast available during and after the keynote) where he discusses how open, network technologies are making the service-driven network and the .com Home very real for consumers.

Making the .com Home a Reality

Sun's .com Home demonstration was created largely in conjunction with GTE and Cisco Systems as part of an overall initiative to create a "Connected Family" environment.

Industry partners including Bosch Siemens, GTE, Cisco, Oracle, Echelon, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Sears, Telia, Whirlpool and others are utilizing Sun's open consumer technologies to design and develop products and services. These innovative new products and prototypes leverage Sun's Java and Jini technologies and are designed to take advantage of services dynamically downloaded from the Internet. By network-enabling the home, products that were once standalone now have the ability to work together. Not only that, but these products are far more dynamic than before: they can leverage new features that manufacturers provide even after the product has been purchased -- benefiting consumers by providing new capabilities, and manufacturers by creating new market opportunities.

The .com Home connected kitchen showcases next-generation products and services using GTE and Telia services and Sun's Java and Jini technologies

The growing interactive television market is clearly an area where content developers are looking for a reliable software platform upon which to build the next generation of interactive television services, such as Electronic Programming Guide, Video-on-Demand and Enhanced Broadcasting. The Java platform, along with the Java TV^TM Application Programming Interface (API), provides an ideal development and deployment platform for emerging interactive services for content developers.

As Sun's technologies for consumer devices and appliances (including Java and Jini technologies) continue to be embraced as standards, development of consumer products and services based on these standards continues to increase significantly for a wide range of devices across multiple industries. Java technology's open, cross-platform capabilities appeal to device manufacturers and service providers, allowing them to develop and deploy products for consumers rapidly and cost-effectively.

Several industry and standards groups including Home Audio/Video Interoperability (HAVi), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) and the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) have adopted the Java platform in their development specifications. Additionally, more than a dozen wireless industry manufacturers and service providers have joined to develop and define an open standard for wireless devices using Sun's Java platform.

Many products being demonstrated in the .com Home at the CES show will be shipping or in trials sometime in 2000 or are already available. As Raj Mata, Senior Product Manager for Sun's Consumer and Embedded technologies, puts it: "This is not the Jetsons -- it's today!"

See Also

Sun's CES Press Releases
(http://java.sun.com/pr/2000/01/ces.press.html)

Inside the Home Gateway Server
(http://java.sun.com/features/2000/01/homegateway.html)

The .Com Home
(http://www.sun.com/consumer-embedded/cover/ces/)

E-Living: "If it's not Internet-ready, it doesn't belong in your home"
(http://www.sun.com/dot-com/perspectives/e-living.html)

Technologies in the .com Home
(http://www.sun.com/consumer-embedded/cover/ces/vendors.html)

Scott McNealy Keynote Webcast
(http://www.sun.com/webcast/ces2000/)

[ This page was updated: 07-Jan-00 ]