This week`s official launch of Solaris 10 saw Sun Microsystems at pains to demonstrate that it is working hard at reinventing itself to meet the challenges of a constantly changing IT landscape.
Although the top 10 of the several 100 technological innovations in Solaris 10 were highlighted, the real emphasis was on the low threshold to entry and business value of the operating system.
Sun plans to make commercial-grade Solaris 10 available for SPARC, x86, AMD64 and EM64T systems as a free download by 31 January 2005.
Scott McNealy, Sun CEO, explained the decision was aimed at removing the barriers to entry by switching to a new business model in which revenue is derived from a range of supporting services.
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun COO, underlined the message that Solaris 10 heralded a new era, saying Sun was back with new value and new partners.
John Loiacono, Sun software group executive VP, indicated that Sun`s approach with Solaris 10 is to view the operating system as a valuable opportunity to improve performance and output.
Senior engineers from the Solaris development group were on hand to demonstrate how Solaris 10 could deliver a 20% performance increase without code changes, and an average performance gain of around 70% using the new Solaris DTrace performance and analysis tool.
Sun is hoping Solaris 10 will go a long way in quashing negative perceptions about the operating system.
Pitting Solaris 10 against the view that Solaris is slower and more expensive than Linux, Loiacono said with the new business model, it could be demonstrated that Solaris is in fact cheaper, and with the technological innovations, faster.
In many ways, Solaris 10 appears to demonstrate Sun`s willingness to get real about the IT environment.
Warwick Ashford, technology editor, ITWeb
Solaris 10 runs on more than 270 non-Sun systems, countering the perception that Solaris runs only on Sun computer systems.
Loiacono said Solaris 10 had been largely developed on X86 systems, and therefore was optimised to run on those systems and not only SPARC systems as widely believed.
Addressing the perception that not all Sun applications run on Solaris, Loiacono said Sun`s entire application portfolio was available for Linux and Solaris.
Finally, Loiacono said it was no longer true that Solaris was unable to run Linux applications. He said Solaris 10 was the only operating system to run Solaris and native Linux binaries side‑by‑side with no modifications, providing investment protection and broader access to applications written for both operating systems.
In many ways, Solaris 10 appears to demonstrate Sun`s willingness to get real about the IT environment. Sun executives admitted mistakes had been made in the past, but said Solaris 10 demonstrated Sun`s innate flexibility and willingness to adapt and reinvent itself.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to assess how much value and benefit will be derived from open source Solaris, with licence details still unknown.
Details of the open source licence were originally expected to coincide with the launch of Solaris 10, but Sun decided to delay the announcement, which is now expected only around the end of the year.
Indications are good that Sun is getting real about the needs, expectations and reservations of current and prospective customers, but it still remains to be seen whether the open source licence and supporting structures will really deliver on the promise.
Share