ISV/IHV Engineering News ISV Engineering

Sun released a SPECjAppServer2004 performance result using top-to-bottom Open Source Software stack components:  OpenSolaris/MySQL/Glassfish.   At 1197.10 JOPS, the performance is highly respectable - not setting any land speed records, but it is in the ball park with other results using the same class of hardware.   The difference (of course) is in the price/performance.

The other contenders were two [1][2] results submitted by Oracle using a stack of (surprise!) Oracle DBMS (proprietary)/Oracle Appserver (proprietary)/Oracle Linux & Red Hat (open source).  On the face of it, the Oracle results (using Dell & HP gear) currently can achieve performance above a result with all Open Source stack components.  The difference is $ & €.   After all, very rarely does a customer choose a system based only on absolute performance advantage.  Price/Performance remains consistently the #1 or #2 reason that customers choose one solution over another.  In this case, even a conservative estimate of the two Oracle results place their $/JOPS at nearly 10x the price of the Sun result.  It is this "10 times"  advantage that is usually quoted by marketeers as being the tipping point that is required to move from an old way of doing something to a new cheaper/better way.   Tom Daly of ISV Engineering at Sun has all of the details here.

It will only be a matter of time before completely Open Source stack components are competing head-to-head with proprietary software solutions even on the absolute performance front.   I remember back in the 90's when Linux was struggling to get a foot hold.  In those days, many customers did say that "Linux performance just isn't there yet" (compared to Unix solutions).   The keyword there is "yet".   Everyone had the full expectation that Linux would one day compete with everyone else in the same raw/absolute performance space.   So it does today, and so will complete Open Source stacks in the near future.

BMSeer has even more comprehensive information on the benchmark here.

SPEC required disclosure : - SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 5th Nov 2008 All comparisons are based on the SPEC SPECjAppServer2004JOPS@Standard metric from www.spec.org or on pricing made using the bill of materials included in each SPECjAppServer2004 result