It was close to lunchtime when my iphone buzzed with the SMS: “Want some FUD?” I had to laugh; while my teenagers are specialists in the new lingo – this errant 'Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt' message from a co-worker was actually an abbreviation for "food". But seeing FUD on my phone's screen reminded me of the months before Y2K – I was working in IT for a telco, and we were feverishly updating all our server equipment to ensure we wouldn't run into the dreaded short date format issues.

Scroll forward 9 years. Here we are, and IT shops are looking at their aging server and storage inventory – many acquired in '99 with Y2K budgets, many facing end-of-service-life, many not meeting current or projected performance demands, costing too much for power and cooling and taking up too much datacenter floorspace.

With the efficiency and consolidation options available today, it's easy to make the case that it's cheaper to move to a new server than stay on the old. So why does anyone hesitate in moving from their older systems? FUD – think of all the issues with moving to something new: painful learning curve, disruption, customized software, ISV apps. Will moving cause costly interruptions to business?

Sun offers two solutions to take the FUD out of datacenter upgrades:

1. Solaris 8 and 9 Containers;
2. Sun Professional Services.

Solaris 8 and 9 Containers are virtual environments for hosting Solaris 8 and 9 applications on a Solaris 10 box. They provide a Solaris 8 and 9 runtime environment with all the performance and quality improvements of the Solaris 10 OS (DTrace, ZFS, Solaris Resource Manager). Now you can upgrade hardware in one stage and your applications in another. Less pain, more time to plan. Containers are a "transition tool" to help port applications to Solaris 10 in comfortable stages (watch this great video with the great Joost Pronk in which he explains Solaris Containers).

And to go with our Containers we have our experts - Sun Professional Services. Our migration team analyzes your original Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 environments, creates a migration plan, and implements and tests solutions as stand-alone projects. Professional Services can easily test, implement and optimize future system and network architectures for our customers (like Barmer Ersatzkasse), while protecting their prior qualification efforts.

No worries. Sun, we take the FUD out of migration. Now if I could just get some lunch.