Sun Hopes to Shine

Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) finally released the latest version of its Solaris operating system yesterday as part of a quarterly networking jamboree at company headquarters in Santa Clara, California (see Sun Unveils Solaris 10).

Solaris 10, which has swallowed up 3,000 engineering years and $500 million in R&D, is the first major upgrade of the operating system for over two years, and Sun has high hopes for its new baby. So high, in fact, that it is opening up the source code and offering Solaris 10 for free. Well, sort of.

Early next year, Sun will make Solaris 10 available at no charge to customers -- moving away from its existing fee structure and introducing a service-based pricing model. Execs compare the new pricing model to phone calling plans; subscriptions will vary in price depending on the level of support and network computing capacity (see Sun Makes Solaris 10 Free ).

In a clear attempt to win market share from Linux and Windows, Sun is playing on users desire to reduce costs and also prove that its underlying IT systems are delivering real business value.

Dan Kuznetsky, an analyst at IDC, describes Solaris 10 as a significant overhaul of what is considered “a world-class” Unix option: Solaris 9. “Not only are they extending what the operating system does and delivering business resiliency, they are also attempting to address the cost issue,” he says.But is all the open source hype a little premature? Although Sun is planning to make the Solaris 10 source code available, Kuznetsky feels that, in reality, Sun is still sending out a confused message with regard to Linux and the open source community.

There is a feeling in the industry at the moment that Sun both embraces Linux and yet competes with it, Kuznetsky says, and that has played to the advantage of its rival operating systems.

This was evident even on last night's Solaris 10 conference call. Sun execs spoke in glowing terms of the new operating system's ability to run native Linux applications, while at the same time touting Solaris 10 as a viable Linux alternative.

Solaris 10 isn't the only thing Sun announced at its event. The vendor also unveiled its new secure application switch, the N2000. If it sounds familiar, it's because the N2000 was originally sold by Nauticus Networks Inc., which was acquired by Sun in January (see Sun Launches Application Switch and Nauticus Dives Into the Data Center).

Sun also used this week's event to flesh out its much-hyped grid computing strategy, which was highlighted at a similar get-together in New York in September, when the vendor announced that it was offering users access to grids of computing power for as little as $1 per hour (see Sun Unlocks Grid for $1).Sun is now adding some flesh to the bones of this initiative, signing up Canadian giant Telus Corp. (NYSE: TU; Toronto: T) as its first strategic partner (see Sun, Telus Team Up).

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum