Good Enough is No Longer Good Enough

Sun's strategy has been consistent for the last few years:

1. Open-source all of Sun software (we're 70% of the way there already).
2. Make it all freely available—and remove barriers to developers and sysadmins who want to get their hands on Sun software.
3. Be the leader in infrastructure software for Web 2.0. That means, be a leading provider of infrastructure for Web 2.0 companies without competing with our partners in developing applications for the enterprise.

So, let's tackle one of the most controversial topics for Sun: Why open-source everything? Why is this important for Sun's business, and most importantly, why is it important for customers?

The subject that continues to fuel discussions everywhere I go is open source enterprise solutions. Most recently, at Sun's Partner Executive Advisory Committee, the conversation highlighted that customers are looking for open-source enterprise solutions to take advantage of x64 power, and they want services and support from a dependable vendor. This got me thinking about how far enterprise open source has come.

One of the challenges in talking about open-source software (OSS) is that folks always think that OSS = Red Hat when, in fact, Red Hat = commercial Linux. But Sun sells branded Linux distributions and the Solaris OS so that customers can choose, and Sun participates in the OpenSolaris.org project to reap the benefits of open source development for customers and partners. Sun has a history of working in OSS.

Commercial Linux from Red Hat was a good choice several years back because it offered the benefits of a “good enough” solution for enterprises looking to escape the clutches of proprietary platforms. Customers, at the time, were willing to settle for the OS controlling what hardware they used. Now, Red Hat is further increasing its service fees and introducing difficult migration paths to new releases. (It's funny that what started out as giving choice and flexibility has become locked down, and increasingly expensive).

Meanwhile, Sun has focused on much more than servicing what the community produces. We have contributed an entire enterprise-class OS to the community, and we're making strides to increase efficiencies and lower costs with technologies like Sun Update Connection Enterprise services (with Steve Wilson out on the front lines). In addition, Solaris 10 provides guaranteed application compatibility from release to release, which means this OS is future-proof. When you look at open source solutions, Sun's focus on services, flexibility and simplicity is proving attractive to enterprises worldwide.

When Sun made commercially-shipping Solaris code available to the community through the OpenSolaris project, it was an unprecedented move. Has this been successful? Considering that in just over a year, more than 16,000 members have joined the OpenSolaris community and, altogether, we've delivered more than 6 Million Solaris 10 licenses (which quadrupled our installed base), I'd say it's been a huge success in terms of growing the Solaris ecosystem. We've also been focused on expanding the availability of Solaris on non-Sun hardware platforms, which I'd also say has been a success; the list of Solaris-supported x86/x64 hardware has grown to over 710 systems. Sharing these highly regarded technologies advances the works of the entire community—including our competition. See, we think healthy competition is a good thing—especially for customers.

We continue to deliver on the commitments we've made around Solaris. Solaris is the truly open alternative for enterprises that want to lower costs and enjoy flexibility in the future, and that recognize the value of interoperability from the desktop to the data center across a range of hardware systems, operating platforms, and technologies. Being open doesn't refer to just the OS; we ship almost 200 open source applications with Solaris 10 and even support a large number of them, including PostgreSQL, Apache and Tomcat.

When Solaris is teamed with Sun's new Sun Fire x4500 server, the power is incredible. With software RAID in Solaris ZFS to maximize RAID capabilities and Solaris Containers delivering a 4x increase in system utilization, the systems almost pay for themselves. On top of that, Solaris Predictive Self-Healing diagnoses and corrects hardware and software failures before they cause a problem. The list goes on.

Solaris provides the tested and tuned OS used for air traffic control and financial trading systems, and for government infrastructure services, made freely available to the masses. Why would anyone continue to choose “good enough” knowing all this? In a recent discussion with a Fortune 100 CIO, he stated “With everything that you [Sun] are doing in Solaris, why would anyone want Linux anymore?” Clearly, the direction we're taking in our development models is resonating well with customers.

Recently, Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens talked about his company's increased focus on development. While it's definitely positive for the community that Red Hat is expanding its footprint into the infrastructure layer with the JBoss acquisition, time will tell how the integration of JBoss technologies unfolds.

As Apache Software Foundation member Geir Magnusson said it:

Red Hat needs to go 'up the stack,' because outfits like SpikeSource and other purveyors of OSS [open-source software] enterprise technology are going to commoditize them.

While that's being sorted out, JBoss developers and users might want to check out the Sun Java Application Platform Suite (which includes the Java EE-based application server on which JBoss was built) combined with Solaris, the Sun Studio developer tools, and the Apache Derby Java DB. The open source alternative could be some combination of the GlassFish project and NetBeans with the Sun-supported Java DB.

While Red Hat may have really started this discussion, Sun is pushing the envelope on what customers can expect from enterprise open source without concern of a fork in the road ahead. The next logical question: “How will Sun make money?”. I'll get to that in another blog.

By the way, it's pretty cool to see some of the players who are getting involved with the Solaris community. Apple is working on incorporating DTrace in the next rev of Mac OS X (code name Leopard) which is due out next spring.

Posted at 04:19PM Oct 30, 2006 by Peder Ulander in Sun  |  Comments[3]