UPDATED: After more than a year of sneak peaks, nightly builds
and beta tests, Sun Microsystems is set to formally
announce the launch of its Solaris 10 operating system.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based network computer maker is scheduled
to outline the features, benefits and near-immediate partner support
of the next-generation OS during its Network Computing ’04Q4 event in
San Jose Monday.
The platform has been available in bits and pieces
since July 2003, courtesy of Sun’s Software Express program and is
compatible with SPARC-based servers as well as x86 environments from
Intel and AMD.
Sun is also expected to announce that Solaris 10 will be available
as a free download by January 31, 2005.
As previously
reported, the operating system itself will not be available until
the end of the year. Sun’s promise of an open source version of
Solaris is also not expected to emerge for several months after that.
The upgrade includes more than 600 improvements. The so-called “Big
Five” additions to Solaris 10 include a partitioning technology (N1
Grid Containers); a diagnostic tool for system administrators
(DTrace), Predictive Self Healing, Crypto Infrastructure based on the
PKCS#11 standard and ZFS (short for Zettabyte File System), which gets
its roots from the classic POSIX-compliant Unix file-system.
Solaris
10 also includes technology from the “government-grade” Trusted
Solaris operating system as well as a Linux Application Environment
(code-named Project Janus), which allows the OS to run Solaris and
native Linux binaries. Already, Sun has prepared its developers with
the release
last week of beta versions of Java Studio 10 (JS 10) and Java Studio
Enterprise 7 (JSE 7).
Sun’s biggest change, however, is to its software pricing
structure. The company started the trend with its Java Enterprise and
Java Desktop offerings by offering a per-user license. With Solaris
10, subscription-based offerings will be offered with a range of
support structures and service level agreements
(SLAs).
The “Free” right to use includes a license for commercial use,
security fixes and updates with registration. The Basic service package
(USD$120 per CPU per year) adds in 90-days installation and
configuration support as well as one individual online skills
self-assessment per system. The Standard service (USD$240 per CPU per
year) includes additional 5×12 phone support, one Web course and
optional training credits. Finally, the Premium service (USD$360 per CPU
per year) extends phone support to 7×24 and additional advanced
technical and educational services.
Mark McClain, vice president of Software Marketing at Sun, said the
variable pricing structure would catch Red Hat’s customers off guard,
including subscribers to Red Hat’s Fedora Project, whose Core
3, codenamed Heidelberg debuted just last week.
“What Red Hat does today is offer a kick-the-tires version and then
they go for free version with pay for a multi-tiered subscription
support,” McClain told internetnews.com. “We are doing the same
thing but with even more aggressive and transitional offerings
targeting not only Red Hat but HP and our own Solaris 9 customers. We
expect a lot of people will choose our test version to show their
bosses how well the system runs and then assess which service level
they most feel comfortable with.”
Michael Dortch, principal business analyst with IT consulting firm
Robert Frances Group, suggests enterprise IT executives should find
the technological strengths of Solaris 10 compelling, especially in
concert with Sun’s new pricing model.
“To be able to obtain free copies of the software for evaluation
and pilot deployments, then to acquire relevant services if and as
needed, should induce many IT executives who thought they didn’t care
about Sun or Solaris to rethink their attitudes,” Dortch told
internetnews.com. “And as anyone who’s bought anything useful
on a ‘free trial’ basis knows, if the solution has value, and you get
to experience that value for free under a time-limited trial, you’re
incredibly unlikely to give them up once that trial is over.”
The only downside for Sun, according to Dortch, is if the number of
people who buy Sun hardware after experimenting with Solaris 10 is
less than three percent.
“Even if hardware sales are lackluster, Sun still has a chance to
build greater financial strength through services, which more than
three percent of enterprises using Solaris 10 are likely to want and
need,” Dortch said. “It will be interesting to see if any Linux
distribution companies, or other purveyors of enterprise-class
operating systems, try to meet or beat Sun’s new pricing model. If so,
it could turn into a buyer’s market for such software, something
likely to warm the cockles of many budget-challenged IT executives’
hearts.”
Sun is also expected to unveil new hardware and software designed to improve data management such as its Sun Secure Application Switch N2000 Series and its StorEdge 6130 array, which serves as the little brother to the recently launched 6920.
