RB: It's more of a vehicle than anything else... It's sort of the derivative. There's two aspects to it. No. 1 is the derivative software that's built on top of Java, all the enterprise systems and so on that run on Java. Obviously there's licensing revenue for things like mobility, [with] J2ME [Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition]. And then the last piece is sort of everything that goes on once the software is built and deployed. So this is service, support, training. That's really where I believe the sort of future of software business goes. People aren't willing to pay to try out the software and build it, but they're willing to pay for service, support, and training after deployment. Look at SpikeSource as an example. There, you're taking open source stacks, you're certifying them, and then you're providing all the services to go with [them]. And I think that is a viable business opportunity and one that Sun's moving towards.

IW: I suspect we're hearing all this praise of open source from Oracle and Sun and IBM and everybody, but behind closed doors, I wonder if these companies are saying, What are going to do to stop this?

RB: To be fair, in some areas, sure. I mean that's sort of human nature. But what's interesting is that we can now point at things like GlassFish, right? The open source Java EE 5 server, it's getting more traction now than the proprietary one ever did. That's opening eyes... The interesting thing is that we are now recognizing direct revenue more than we ever did with the tools just by selling training on them... So it turns out that the theory is correct. If you make the software available and people build on it and deploy to it, there is a market for service for people that need 24/7 support. There is a market for people who are looking for indemnification from Sun, because we put our seal of approval on it. There is a market for people who are looking for training, whether it's developer training or sys admin training. Again, once that sort of demonstrable evidence starts appearing, a lot of the naysayers are just finally being converted.

IW: You also wanted to talk about application platform integration. What's happening there?

RB: This is mainly about the business integration space. This is the SOA space, specifically in the area [of] the SeeBeyond acquisition. This is business process modeling, business integration, service integration, tying that all together. My perspective is that that whole service orchestration and service integration business plays a big role in sort of Web 2.0 design.