Sun Microsystems' shipping of the Solaris 9 Operating Environment will be welcomed by the vendor's user base in SA as it creates a true operating infrastructure that is more than just an operating system. That's according to Tertius Bezuidenhout, national SA manager at Sun Microsystems SA, who says Solaris 9 OE includes a bundling of add-on features, such as firewalls and resource management, which previously had to be purchased separately.
"Now that all the essential features are bundled, Solaris 9 OE can be defined as a true operating environment as opposed to a mere operating system. With more than 300 enhancements and new features built into the environment, users will find significant improvements in application and relational database performance," he says.
These improvements help save time and money and improve security, manageability, performance and compatibility.
Bezuidenhout says these key differentiators ensure that existing applications running at enterprises are guaranteed to be compatible when migrating to the new environment.
"Unlike upgrades to competitive operating systems, it won't be necessary for applications to be recompiled or to change code in the migration process as Solaris 9 OE subscribes to the same standard as the previous version. This means investment protection is assured."
Solaris 9 OE also helps customers reduce costs and risks by making applications easier to deploy and manage. The Solaris OE is the foundation for Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE), the integration of Sun's portfolio of software products. Solaris is the leading Unix operating environment with Sun servers owning 64% US market share in shipments and 54% revenue share, according to Gartner Dataquest's "1Q02 Servers Quarterly Statistics".
Locally, just-released research by BMI-TechKnowledge, reflects a similar domination by Sun. In the total systems revenue category, which includes all operating systems, Sun overtook Compaq to lead by a margin of 32% over Compaq. "Sun is now officially the largest systems company in SA," says Bezuidenhout, who adds that in the Unix systems revenue category, Sun is the only vendor to show growth. The report indicates that Sun leads HP by a margin of 210% - more than double HP's Unix revenue. In the overall systems category, Sun is the largest vendor with 24% of the market, growing by 38%.
Scott McNealy, chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems, says: "The industry's premiere operating environment for the enterprise just got better, giving developers the richest industrial strength platform for application delivery. It provides users with the most reliable, scalable, secure, and manageable operating environment today. Now we're converging it with critical areas of Java technology and XML middleware to extend the platform for even faster deployment."
Solaris 9 OE delivers several significant firsts for the industry. The most important of these is the integration of the new Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.3 compliant Sun ONE Application Server 7, Platform Edition with a single server development and deployment license for use on Sun systems. Solaris 9 OE also integrates the Sun ONE Directory Server, the foundation for open, scalable identity management.
The integration of these Sun ONE middleware elements into Solaris 9 OE makes it easier to build and deploy application and web services based on Java, XML and SOAP technologies, while helping customers to save on acquisition, integration, testing, support, and management costs.
The inclusion of application server middleware into Solaris 9 OE can help lower the cost of operations as companies develop Web services. However, Sun customers will still be able to work with third party applications and middleware with Solaris 9 OE, as the company is avoiding proprietary lock-ins.
Share
Editorial contacts