Submitted by “IBM and Sun Microsystems did indeed announce an agreement for deploying the Solaris operating system on IBM servers, but it wasn’t the system we guessed: IBM will deploy Solaris for its Intel x86-based System x and BladeCenter servers. It’s a significant move, as it validates the presence of Sun’s operating system among a broad customer base that few can mistake as a “niche.” As Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz told reporters today, IBM becomes the first Tier 1 reseller of Solaris products and services for x86 platforms.” His blog is here.
Here you can read Jonathan gushing about the announcement:
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/momentous_day_for_solaris
I’m confused as how anyone could define Solaris as “niche”. It’s not even close to being niche.
HP seems to like describing both SPARC and Solaris as “niche”. Their PR folks have apparently also described the internet as a “niche” area.
Yeah.. I never got how recycling RMA parts was customer service.. Maybe there’s a HP Dictionary somewhere.
Well, people try to use niche as an insult. You know, Porn is a niche, a $16billion niche. Not that anyone is complaining about that
“that few can mistake as a niche”
I’m not really sure what that statement is supposed to mean. Are they saying it’s a niche, or that it’s not a niche though a few people mistake it as one?
Edited 2007-08-17 01:34
Probably both.
Precision of language is so underrated in our society half of what we hear we doubt…
I really have little patience for a PR or marketing department that can’t get a feeling across…
So…Solaris x86 runs on a few more x86 systems…..
*YAWN*
seriously, its funny how people are getting their panties in a bunch over this.
When one of your biggest competitors is selling and supporting YOUR product on their hardware, I’d be pretty excited.
For the volume and the money yes – otherwise no.
IBM is a weird company, with no ideology regarding their own products at all. If there’s profit, they’ll sell anything to anyone. Also they mostly regard themselves as a hardware compagny, the software is only an add-on (Additional value).
hm, i thought they regard themselves mostly as a service company these days..
Depends how you define “service”.
z/Series and i/Series are pretty important to them, as are the Tivoli and Lotus brands (and then you’ve got DB2 thrown in for good measure for those people not running an IBM OS that comes with it more or less built-in).
Sure, they make money off being a service provider—a lot of money, but if they didn’t produce all that hardware and software, they wouldn’t have much in the way of services to provide, really.
When one of your biggest competitors is selling and supporting YOUR product on their hardware, I’d be pretty excited.
IBM announced Solaris for the PowerPC-based PReP machines way back in the 1990s, too. Availability is the key but it’s likely that Solaris will be gone within 18 months as an IBM sales option.
The more hardware supported by Solaris, the more drivers implemented for commodity hardware.
Increasing the user base of one OS, just turns it stronger.
And the most important thing – it also includes a focus by IBM and treating Solaris as a first class operating system, increase software availability, increase deployment and services being sold. With IBM getting behind it, it should mean more third parties involved with providing software support, hardware support and services.
To be blunt, keep in mind that IBM, particularly IBM Global Services, is a figurative whore that will sell anything to anyone if they think it will generate revenue.
Having said that, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. All the more power to them and Sun, just wanted to point out that IBM’s embrace of Sun is probably less about the actual technical merits of Solaris and more about the marketing, not that I’m implying deficiencies in Solaris. And it’s maybe yet another veiled threat to Red Hat. It’s all about perspective. More importantly, they need to keep a wide-open portfolio for customers that won’t cough up for AIX.
Just offering my grain of salt…
Does anyone know if Project Looking Glass is still alive?
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I’m not really sure what that statement is supposed to mean. Are they saying it’s a niche, or that it’s not a niche though a few people mistake it as one?
It’s about as niche as BSD is dieing. Just a way for some folks to spread FUD, along the same lines as “Slowlaris” and all that.
Edited 2007-08-18 11:51
i hope to see ibm collaborate to port solaris on power.