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Sun Microsystems and Intel are the latest archrivals in the IT industry to put down their guns and make peace.
The two computer giants on Monday unveiled a broad alliance that marries Sun's Solaris Unix operating system with Intel's Xeon processors. Under the pact, Intel will endorse Solaris as a mainstream OS and Unix platform of choice plus distribute OEM copies of Solaris. In exchange, Sun will develop and sell Xeon servers
and optimize Solaris for Xeon and Intel's upcoming 45-nanometer
multicore processors, which will run multiple OSes on a single piece of
silicon.
Sun Microsystems and Intel are the latest archrivals in the IT industry to put down their guns and make peace.
Slide Show: Intel, Sun Announce Broad Partnership
The two computer giants on Monday unveiled a broad alliance that marries Sun's Solaris Unix operating system with Intel's Xeon processors. Under the pact, Intel will endorse Solaris as a mainstream OS and Unix platform of choice plus distribute OEM copies of Solaris. In exchange, Sun will develop and sell Xeon servers
and optimize Solaris for Xeon and Intel's upcoming 45-nanometer
multicore processors, which will run multiple OSes on a single piece of
silicon.
The Sun-Intel alliance follows similar truces between
industry rivals, including Microsoft and Sun, Microsoft and Novell, and
Intel and Apple.
Sun pledges to ship dual-core
Intel Xeon systems optimized for Solaris by the end of the first half.
Later on, though no timetable was given, Sun plans to ship multi-way
Xeon systems, including an eight-way server -- a high end server that would compete well against Sun's own UltraSparc Unix servers.
The Sun-Intel pact will likely expand opportunities for Sun VAR partners that have been limited to UltraSPARC and AMD Opteron architectures, as well as would give Intel partners another OS option -- in addition to Windows and Linux -- to preload on industry-standard servers, Sun and Intel executives said.
In a Webcast on Monday, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said the Sun-Intel
pairing may appear strange after decades of intense competition, but he
insisted that both companies are committed to ending the era of
negative rhetoric that once divided the Unix and Intel worlds.
"We want Solaris to scream on Xeon and blow everyone in the marketplace
away," Schwartz said. "Intel and Sun getting together around the
promotion of Solaris changes the game in the marketplace."
Sun and Intel plan to collaborate on engineering, and Intel promises to offer support for Sun's Open Solaris, Java efforts and NetBeans IDE.
Sun has provided a version of Solaris for Intel architecture for more than a decade (and once even pulled the plug on that version when Intel announced its 64-bit processor
plans) but has been increasing its support for x32 and x64 systems as
Linux appeared on the scene and took a big bite of its market share.
Sun announced a pact with Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices in 2003
and began shipping Opteron systems soon thereafter. Schwartz said Sun's
partnership with AMD is intact but added that teaming with Intel is
necessary for Sun to reach a broader market.
The deal with Intel also underscores a significant shift in the
marketplace, from a focus on OSes and servers to service-oriented
architectures and the virtualized data center, Sun and Intel executives
said.
Virtualization enables multiple OSes and workloads to run on a single
server and be moved from one server to another in a data center, based
on a company's on-demand processing needs.
For Intel, the deal with Sun assures that it can support and sell
Windows, Linux and Unix on its upcoming multicore processors that offer
I/O vitualization and are optimized for OS kernel virtualization.
"The ability to run multiple operating systems on a single microprocessor that began on the mainframe is now coming down to volume servers," Intel CEO Paul Otellini said. Intel currently has four OSes running on a single chip in the labs, he said.
Otellini and Schwartz said they will continue to develop their respective 64-bit Itanium and UltraSparc Unix servers but won't engage in any more "religious wars."
The pact also signifies Sun's effort to regain market momentum by
pushing four separate business lines -- systems, software, services and
storage -- independent of one another, especially Solaris on
industry-standard architectures.
Schwartz said more than 7 million of copies of Solaris have been
downloaded since Sun launched its Open Solaris program in 2005, and
seven out of 10 of those downloads have been loaded on Intel- or
AMD-based systems.
Solaris Unix is far from dead, Schwartz noted. "The issue [of Solaris'
survival] is off the table. We clearly have volume, and we can work
with Intel to amplify that volume," he said.
Doug Nassaur, president and CEO of True North technology, a Sun
partner in Duluth, Ga., said the Sun-Intel alliance should boost the
market presence of Solaris.
"It's a better idea [for Sun] to hit the majority of the market
than to do something exclusive that misses it. They are in fourth
place, so teaming up with the No. 1 [chip maker] can't be bad," Nassaur
said. "We use Solaris x86 with great success. Anything that assures
commitment to that platform I will view as positive."
Read the original article: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196902781
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