NEW YORK-Sun Microsystems Inc. and Frontier Communications, a unit of Frontier Corp., announced they have joined forces to provide “sophisticated, outsourced [Internet Protocol] messaging software for carrier class, hosted e-mail products,” Rolla Huff said during a teleconference Aug. 9. Huff is president and chief operations officer of Frontier Communications.
The goal is to allow companies to provide “anywhere, anytime communications” to and among many kinds of end-user devices, whether they are personal computers, mobile phones or other kinds of handheld wireless devices, said John McFarlane, president of Sun’s Network Service Provider division.
“We want to change the communications paradigm so that companies look to the network provider for applications,” Huff said.
“We want to be the generator of data traffic, not just the carrier of data traffic.”
The alliance, which will use Sun’s i-Planet Web dock and Frontier’s multinational Internet Protocol network, expects to make its new e-mail products commercially available to large companies late this year. It plans to offer the products to general business customers by early next year and to companies of all sizes by mid-2000.
