Behind the smoke and mirrors of the Internet's infrastructure, behind its "green curtain," what is really going in? In a world where millions of new users join the network every week, are we dealing with a revolution or evolution? These and other questions were addressed this morning by Robert Brewin, Sun's CTO and VP of Software, in his keynote address on Day Three of AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 West at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California.

"The next generation web has emerged as the environment which provides the social fabric upon which the current and next generation of Internet participants can form communities, collaborate, interact and share," said Brewin.

The emergence of the interactive web experience, he explained, has driven technological change across the entire spectrum of web applications, from client technology to the engines which drive the web itself. 

Brewin's goal was to provide both a peek at the evolution of the rich connected client experience and a glimpse into what's required in tomorrow's networks and datacenters to support the these next generation clients. The challenge, said Brewin, is to bridge the gap between core enterprise and the Web.

Donning his Sun hat for a moment, Brewin reminded the audience that Java is on five-and-a half billion devices, of which nearly 2 billion are cellphones. Java can be thought of as "frequency grease," making it reallly eay to knit things together. 150 different programing languages have now been written to Java.

But an entire ecosystem is required to support the next-generation Web. Software needs to run on systems, software requires services, and everything needs storage.