MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-09-22 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Sun Open Source stratergy of the day
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Sun will position Solaris against Red Hat Linux in low-end servers,
while embracing Linux as well. Sun's newly clarified dual-OS strategy
includes plans for a Linux compatibility layer for Solaris and an open
source version of Solaris, and it increasingly resembles Linux
strategies adopted by traditional embedded companies.
Sun's strategy announcements came yesterday during its quarterly
earnings conference, and during a well-publicized meeting with Wall
Street customers.
At the same time that Sun plans to push Solaris into the low-end server
market, it is embracing and supporting Linux in that and other markets.
For example, the company announced last week that it will ship Carrier
Grade Linux (CGL) on a new line of inexpensive servers for the
telecom/datacom space, a market where Solaris has been strong in the
past.
Sun's dual-OS strategy increasingly resembles those of a number of
traditional embedded companies that have been forced to reckon with the
emergence of Linux as the standard embedded operating system. Companies
supporting Linux alongside legacy proprietary RTOSes (real-time
operating systems) include LynuxWorks, Wind River, and Enea.
Sun's interest in Linux fueled rumors last week that it would acquire
embedded Linux company MontaVista, but LynuxWorks may be a more probable
option, given LynuxWorks's experience with binary compatibility
libraries. LynuxWorks worked for three years on technology that lets
unaltered Linux binaries run on its proprietary LynxOS RTOS, before
shipping its Linux ABI (application binary interface) Compatibility
Layer in March of 2002. Sun has said it will ship a Linux compatibility
library with a new version of Solaris expected this year.
Sun's strategic shift to drive both Linux and Solaris into new markets
comes as the company appears to be gaining its feet somewhat,
financially. The company reported negative but vastly improved results
for its most recent quarter, losing only $388 million on sales of $11.9
billion for the quarter that ended June 30, Associated Press reports.
The same quarter in 2003 saw a staggering loss of $3.43 billion on sales
of $11.43 billion.
Not only did Sun's loss narrow by a factor of ten, its 2004 loss was
offset by a gain of $1.95 billion from a settlement with Microsoft, AP
reports.
AP reports that during the conference, Sun executives drew a bead on Red
Hat, stating that Solaris offers significant advantages over Red Hat
Enterprise Linux when run on low-cost servers with AMD Opteron (64-bit)
processors. "We are very much a good citizen of the community and love
the Linux community. But we believe we have a superior product offering
from a performance, stability, security, and price advantage standpoint
compared to the brand of Linux called Red Hat," AP quotes Sun's chief
marketing officer Anil Gadre as saying.
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