Sun Has an Intel Change of Heart

Computerworld - Just months after announcing its intention to discontinue new Solaris versions for Intel Corp. hardware, Sun Microsystems Inc. has apparently had a change of heart.
The company this week will announce plans to release a new version of Solaris 9 for Intel hardware, scheduled to become available early next year. Solaris 9 for Intel will be initially available on the same two-processor LX50 Intel Linux server that Sun is introducing this week.
The company will also announce a new "whole system" strategy for licensing Solaris 9 on Intel, said Bill Roth, a Sun product manager.
Under the new model, users who want to run Solaris 9 on Intel hardware will be able to get the operating system only as part of a Sun hardware bundle. Currently, users can license Solaris 8 separately and run it on any Intel hardware of their choice.
"We are moving the Intel product into our mainstream product range," Roth said. As a result, Solaris 9 will be licensed along the same lines as Solaris, he said.
The move, which reverses a Sun announcement in January, should reassure users about the company's commitment to support future Solaris versions on Intel, Roth said.
"There was a misunderstanding in the community that we had deferred the production of Solaris 9 on Intel. We were just realigning our strategy" back in January, he said.
Nonetheless, Sun's abrupt about-face is puzzling, given the apparent lack of any immediate demand for Solaris on Intel beyond a very small, low-end base, analysts said.
Sun's low-end Netra servers, which have been very popular in the telecommunications and financial services industries, have been under some pressure from lower-cost Linux and Wintel commodity servers, said Charles King, an analyst at The Sageza Group Inc. in Mountain View, Calif.
"Sun's move makes me wonder whether the pressure is greater than they would like to admit publicly," he said.