Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, IBM and several other companies have joined a software plan that uses Java to link cell phones and servers while keeping Microsoft out of the picture. The move is the second phase of a plan that No 1 cell phone maker Nokia began in November to standardise how cell phones and other mobile devices connect to the Internet. Many telecommunications and phone companies supported the first phase; now the plan has expanded to include all the top makers of software that runs Java programs on servers.

If the effort succeeds, programmers writing server software won’t need to worry about whether the person tapping into it is using a cell phone, a handheld computer or a desktop PC. “The consensus now is we need a single infrastructure that will be multi-channel,” said Eric Stahl, senior product-marketing manager at BEA Systems, the top Java server software company.

The effort is guaranteed to repel Microsoft, which shuns Java and would prefer companies to write software that works directly with Windows. If the plan succeeds, Microsoft could be hampered in its protracted efforts to extend its desktop stronghold into servers and gadgets. But the battle is only in its initial stages. The group plans to expand the capabilities of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), the software many servers use to run Internet applications such as e-commerce ‘shopping carts’. The idea is to assemble some of the existing standards that mobile devices use for communication and presenting information and then make sure J2EE servers use those standards, Stahl said.

The alliance hasn’t yet announced which standards will be supported in J2EE, but candidates include XHTML for displaying Web pages on small wireless devices, SyncML for synchronising information between mobile devices and other computing equipment, and version 2.0 of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) to tap into Internet services