JohnnyL's Blog

For those of you who read yesterday's blog, you know why my wife has started calling me Crazy Ivan... but that's a whole other story! Now back to my day job.

This morning we announced our entire server-side software portfolio will be free of charge and open source. Not pieces, all of it.

But more importantly, with the Solaris Enterprise System announced today, we are giving developers unencumbered access to all the key infrastructure and development software they need. Open, standards-based, complete, multiplatform and free.

We strongly believe this is the only open, enterprise-class multiplatform alternative to Windows on the x86/x64 platform (remember that HP-UX and AIX only don't run on x86 and/or x64).

This new operating environment includes not only an OS kernel, file system services, networking services, etc, but also, application services, web services, communication/messaging services, identity services, naming services, directory services, database services, management services, and the commensurate development tools. You can use a specific Java Suite, such as Identity Management or Business Integration, or you may choose only the pieces you'd like and combine with other standards-based components.

Our motivation is simple. Volume wins. Every time. The more people are using an open, standards-based solution, the more choices you have. The more you are not locked in to a single vendor. The greater an ecosystem will be built. The better you can leverage a community versus only those within your four walls. It allows us to participate in, and grow communities for you, address your biggest pain points and deliver the world's best infrastructure technology.

Are we crazy? Maybe. But so was Java, and NFS, and low cost SMP servers, and not adopting Itanium (oops, I guess that was never really crazy), and, and...

So far, every customer I have disclosed this to says it will make them entirely rethink how they are planning their next generation of applications and services. Freely available software is not coming. It's here. And we will be a leader in bringing it to you.

If you think that's crazy, just wait 'til December 6. In the meantime, check out my podcast on today's announcement at podcast
Posted by johnnyl ( Nov 30 2005, 09:00:00 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [3]

Comments:

This is absolutely awesome. Making our software easily available to developers will help them to build applications the right way. Restricting them requires choices that we don't want them to have to make (write more code rather than using a platform based on cost).

Posted by Dale Ferrario on November 30, 2005 at 02:25 PM PST #

Unfortunately you didn't quite get the Crazy Ivan analogy right. The crazy ivan (as depicted in Clancy's book) is a maneuver by the Russian sub to check it's acoustic 'blind spot'; not a tactic to zig when the enemy expects a zag. Somewhat ironic in the sense that Sun had a few blind spots that allowed competitors to sneak up and overtake. Granted the open source / free thing is a zig, I just hope, you know, it can drive the kind of revenue that software from BEA, IBM, and even JBoss generates. It's like the used car salesman says: We lose money on each car but we make it up on volume. Go for the volume baby!

Posted by Ralph Bracci on November 30, 2005 at 11:12 PM PST #

I guess this amazing announcement could be summarised as: The bits are free, a throat to choke isn't.

Certainly going to be very nice for small companies who don't generally pay for a service contract. However, such companies tend to have learning/training barriers to entry - ie they'd need a cheap way to get their sys-admin up to speed on something as wide and deep as the Solaris Enterprise System.

Posted by Chris Rijk on December 01, 2005 at 04:26 AM PST #