Solaris chief John Loiacono has told press while he wants customers to buy Solaris, he will also sell them Linux in the name of choice.
Am I trying to blow away Linux? No, Loiacono said.
What Sun does lack, though, is a Linux IP strategy in the wake of his decision to terminate Sun’s open source distribution for Red Had and SuSE running on Sun hardware and systems.
My boss [Scott McNealy] was quoted a while back saying we don’t have a Linux strategy. We have a Linux strategy, we don’t have a Linux IP strategy, Loiacono said.
Turning to Sun’s unsettled relationship with Solaris on x86, which Sun nearly killed in 2002, Loiacono said Sun has been working during the past year to achieve functionality parity between Solaris on x86 and Solaris on Sun’s SPARC chip.
Sun is preparing to release Solaris 10 for SPARC, Intel x86 and AMD Inc Opteron, platform this year, with additional plans also underway to help AMD scale 64-bit AMD beyond four processors through work at the hyper transport layer.
We neglected x86. We have been working in the past year… we believe we have functionally parity between the two, Loiacono said of the company’s work for Solaris on SPARC and Intel.
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Looking ahead, Loiacono said Sun is now developing Solaris on Intel to beat Linux on Intel. Next goal is parity or faster than Linux in performance, Loiacono said.
Operating platforms vice president Loiacono spoke while outlining for press what he alleged were a set of common perceptions, or misconceptions, about Solaris on x86. These included the belief that Solaris on SPARC is better than Solaris on x86.
Tackling the belief there are no applications for Solaris on x86, Loiacono claimed 11,000 applications are today available while Sybase, Oracle and BEA Systems have signed up to deliver their enterprise applications on x86 Solaris by the summer.
Veritas Software Corp is the last of the big vendors outstanding, and Loiacono said he expected the company to sign-up this summer.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
