Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparc buddy Fujitsu Ltd is going to sell and support Solaris x86 on its 32-bit Intel Corp servers in Japan beginning in the second half of the year, and subsequently on 64- bit systems worldwide. Fujitsu’s Amdahl Corp unit will do likewise. Sun and Fujitsu will also jointly enhance the operating system with reliability, availability and serviceability features. The first Fujitsu-derived enhancements will show up in a version of Solaris scheduled for the first half of 1999. Back in May 1994 Fujitsu committed $500m to a five-year program for developing Sun’s Sparc RISC – Fujitsu says its Sparc business is good and that the Solaris x86 deal doesn’t not dampen its enthusiasm for the RISC. Fujitsu joins Sun’s Solaris business partners council – which now has a grand total of three members, including fellow Solaris x86 traveler NCR Corp – and will assign a team of US-based engineers to the project. The council is to meet in a few weeks’ time. The two companies will be seeking new ISVs. Sun claims 3,400 applications up on Solaris x86. Fujitsu’s other computer systems company, ICL Plc, will not replace the UnixWare operating system it ships on its Intel servers with Solaris. Ironically ICL completed the first port of Unix SVR4 to Sparc as DRS, but has now phased that and its Sparc servers out in favor of UnixWare-on-Intel.
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