Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) 
announced today that Orange SA, a London-based international mobile phone company, has chosen the Java Enterprise System to replace its current Sun software in Europe. Orange has operations in Benelux, and other western Europe regions.
Orange has 22,000 employees and is a London-based subsidiary of France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) , an international telecom carrier with more than 118 million customers worldwide. It will install Java software on its system of more than 1,300 Sun servers.
In-House Upgrades
The new system will include elements for messaging, calendar, directory Web and portal servers and the Sun clusters, with local implementations in various parts of Europe.
Java Enterprise is an open software package that can be upgraded by in-house developers. It recently cost Sun US$82 million to settle a patent suit by Kodak, which claimed it had acquired the title to Java Enterprise from Wang Laboratories.
Seriously Simple
Orange will be licensed on a $100-per-employee annual subscription basis, and have a three-year rollout.
John Loiacono, Sun's executive vice president, software, described Java Enterprise System as "serious software made simple -- simplified product, simplified operation and simplified price."
He said it will reduce deployment costs for Orange throughout Europe, and offer new services 
without the need for further software investment, consistently across Europe.
Multi-Platform
The announcement cheered Sun supporters. Sun has been competing strongly with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) for net-development business. Sun spokesman Brett Wilcox told LinuxInsider that the next version of Java Enterprise "will be a multiple-platform system -- it will run on Linux, hpUX and Microsoft systems."
Wilcox explained that Java and Java Enterprise System are separate terms.
"Java is a system that was jointly developed by several firms, but Java Enterprise System includes subsystems developed independently by Sun, and is marketed separately," he said.
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