Sun
Has A Linux Strategy
Sun
had a major presence at LinuxWorld, both on the floor, and with
press announcements, partnerships, and analyst meetings.
I'd guess this means they're moving further into a
commitment to Linux although they certainly continue to view their
proprietary Solaris-based products as more appropriate for mission
critical or high end applications.
As
Sun's VP of Software Jonathan Schwartz said at LinuxWorld,
"the idea that Linux obliterates UNIX and leaves Microsoft
unscathed" (which he believes is the underlying belief of IBM
and HP) is dead wrong. Schwartz sees Linux and Unix as
complementary strategies,with Linux simply being another
operating system (in addition to Solaris on SPARC and Solaris on
Intel) that Sun can offer on its own stack (hardware, operating
system, open source software, middleware-Sun ONE and iForce).
There
was a software focus to the Sun LinuxWorld announcements, but
being Sun, a few hardware items, too.
For example:
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Sun
is now partnering with Ximian <http://www.ximian.com/>
to provide an email interface, personal calendar, and
contract manager through Ximian's Evolution product, as well
as group collaboration function via the Ximian Connectors for
Solaris Sun ONE and Microsoft Exchange.
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The
Sun™ ONE software stack on Linux has been enhanced,
including the immediate availability of both Sun ONE
Application Server 7 and the recent delivery of Sun ONE
Directory Server 5.1 on Linux. Other Sun ONE products that
support Linux today include Sun ONE Web Server 6, Sun ONE
Active Server Pages, Sun ONE Studio 4, Sun ONE Grid Engine,
and Sun ONE Grid Engine, Enterprise Edition.
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Imminent
delivery of other Sun ONE products on Linux, including Sun ONE
Portal Server, Sun ONE Identity Server, Sun ONE Calendar
Server, and Sun ONE Messaging Server, all of which are
scheduled to run on Linux within the year.
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Sun
has also been active in the open source community, contributing
over 8 million lines of code, including its recent commitment of
its grid engine portal and portlet technology.
All
of Sun's Java™ technology offerings for both the server and the
desktop are tested and available on the Linux Operating System including:
Java™ 2, Standard Edition (J2SE)™, Java™ 2, Enterprise
Edition (J2EE)™ including J2EE v 1.4, Java Web Services
Developer Pack (Java WSDP), and the Jini™ Starter Kit (JSK).
We
had an extended opportunity to meet with Curt Sasaki of Sun and
his team, to have a closer look at Sun's Mad Hatter, Linux desktop
solution, slated for beta this spring and for general availability
this summer. Sun offers a modern GUI interface, an Outlook-like
email environment via Ximian's Evolution, and a fairly robust set
of office software components from Sun's own StarOffice office
suite. It is based on
open source software including the Mozilla browser, the GNOME
interface, StarOffice, and Ximian.
Sun
tells us that StarOffice and its open source counterpart
OpenOffice.org have enjoyed more than 6 million downloads (plus
millions of copies given out with all of the Linux distros and
downloaded from mirror sites). Even filtering that number with an analyst's jaded eye, we'd
have to assume that a few million users must, by now, have tried
the product.
Sun
is more optimistic (or perhaps, more accurately, their timing is
more optimistic) about Linux desktops, than many of their
competitors. Schwartz believes that while the marketing strategy
for StarOffice is "let the customers find it," the
company will ultimately move to a multi-channel distribution
strategy. Sun
believes the market is bigger sooner because academic institutions
will default to Linux rather than upgrading to XP (required for
the next release of Microsoft Office, Office 11) and the third
world country opportunity for a less expensive alternative is very
high. We'd agree that
these value-oriented markets will find the free version of
StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, of interest. We'd doubt that will sell
much Sun hardware (which we believe is the point of the whole
thing).
On
the hardware front, Sun is seeing good success with its LX50 Linux
server and has plans to offer a more robust model.
Sun still believes, in the tradition of its CEO Scott
McNealy, that if you ship lots of desktops you ship lots of
servers. In this
case, Jonathan Schwartz says, they will be Linux and Solaris on
Intel servers, with Evolution software.
That
leaves Sun in the position of selling free operating systems and
partner software on commodity hardware that they must acquire in a
competitive market. Of
course, they can still hope to sell StarOffice, other Sun
software, and those big SPARC servers - but we'd note that at
LinuxWorld their competitors are making the point that offering
customers Linux on those bigger servers is where the market is
heading.
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