IBM & Sun Agreement Puts Pressure on HP

eldavojohn writes "IBM has turned to long time rival Sun in an effort to bring Solaris to its mainframes. Sun may be taking this chance to drop out of the server market while at the same time capture Solaris subscriptions via IBM sales. Either way, this certainly pressures HP in the server department."

out of the server market?

[jcgf]

Sun may be taking this chance to drop out of the server market while at the same time capture Solaris subscriptions via IBM sales.

I don't know, Sun is investing quite a bit in their new niagra processors, so why would they get out of the server business?

Not really mainframes

[Jim Hall]

It's not really mainframes. Yes, the IBM / Sun agreement will eventually put Solaris on the IBM mainframe, but more importantly was this bit at the beginning of the article:

The collaboration announced Thursday will enable Sun's Solaris operating system to run on IBM servers. That means customers that run Sun servers will be able to switch to Big Blue's hardware without having to rewrite any programs. / At first this will be possible on IBM's "x" series of servers, which also run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows or the open-source Linux system. But eventually IBM hopes to bring Solaris to the mainframe, the big multitasking machines that have been one of the company's core profit centers for decades.

So you'll be able to run Solaris on IBM x-series hardware. This is a big deal. While you're unlikely to see big customers migrating their workload off the big systems (E25k, etc) to x-series, certainly you'll have customers moving smaller Solaris workloads to x-series. When you can run Solaris on IBM z-series (the mainframe) then customers can look again to move the big systems to IBM/Solaris.

Wow, it's just so weird to write "IBM/Solaris". :-)

Submitter is an idiot

[PCM2]

Nowhere in the article does it say Sun is thinking of dropping out of the server market. Rather, it mentions that Sun is tied with Dell for the #3 spot. You'd have to be an idiot to think Sun was even considering walking away now.

Doesn't add up

[evilviper]

IBM has turned to long time rival Sun in an effort to bring Solaris to its mainframes.

Yes, if you want Solaris, Sun would be the company to talk to. The fact that they WANT Solaris to run on their machines (not yet mainframes) is the news here, since they've been fierce competitors for decades.

Sun may be taking this chance to drop out of the server market while at the same time capture Solaris subscriptions via IBM sales.

That doesn't sound too likely, with open sourcing the core of Solaris a while back, as well as some important components. Admittedly, RedHat is doing fine with that strategy, but it really doesn't sound like something Sun would risk.

Why do I get the feeling both companies expect to be able to screw each other over, somehow in the future, with this agreement?

Either way, this certainly pressures HP in the server department.

Why? Even if IBM gets a few more points of the server market (taking it from Sun) HP's market share shouldn't be affected.

Not the first time...

[georgewilliamherbert]

In the 90s, there was a PowerPC port of Solaris 2.x. IBM has wanted to get out of the AIX business for decades. Sun had the chance to walk in and take over the UNIX market in pretty much one fell swoop, and walked away from it for percieved strategy benefits at the time.

IBM still wants to walk away from AIX... hence the Linux support. But I think they realize that there are businesses who are queasy about high end enterprise Linux who will jump all over Solaris, and it's essentially just having to agree to a marketing project now so it's free for everyone...

Sun doesn't want out of the server market. The server market keeps Sun's employees happy and well paid.

Re:Bait-n-switch

[HockeyPuck]

A couple of additional points here. First, IBM paints a pretty picture about being all cozy with Linux. The truth is that they use it as a bait-n-switch tactic to get people to move to AIX or z/OS (all proprietary IBM Operating Systems). This means added revenue for IBM. That is, as soon as customers start putting a heavy load on the system, IBM will start pushing AIX or z/OS as a preferred solution.

Dunno about bait and switch being an IBM trait. You could say that for ANY IT vendor. You start out by buying their entry/lowend gear and if you continue to grow they start to recommend larger/higherend versions of their gear. There aren't many shops where the google/yahoo model (add more and more commodity servers...) works. While the largest x86 based server IBM makes can have 32CPUs (primary use is VMWare), i highly doubt that windows or linux could take advantage of that many CPUs for a large database installation, while AIX/OS400 have no problems dealing with high numbers of CPUs.

Since this is /. and we must have examples:

I'm sure...

Your network is made up of hundreds of 16port Cisco hubs and not 9slot Cat6ks.
Your storage sits on internal disk and not external arrays by EMC/HDS/IBM/HP..
You still ride the same 1 gear bicycle you had when you were 6, and didn't upgrade to one with more gears.
10Mb ethernet on coax is still the preferred medium.
Haven't upgraded from linux 2.2 or windows 95.

Re:Keeping Solaris Relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is, why is IBM interested?

They want the financial services market. Really. Major financials I've been in (yes, they're household names) run one of the following:

• Linux
• Solaris
• Windows

That's probably the list of servers, in order of decreasing market share. In some of the larger ones, Solaris (both on SPARC and x86) win over Linux, while others have bigger Linux installations. What I haven't seen have been HP/UX. I've seen one financial use AIX boxes, and that was over ten years ago now. IBM wants inroads into these companies, however they can get it, and they see being able to run Solaris apps (anywhere from trading platforms like GL or Fidessa, to FIX engines to Market Data pieces) on IBM hardware as a big win. On the heels of IBM hardware come things like IBM support contracts and IBM consulting.

I'm posting this anonymously, because even though there aren't any identifying stuff here, I really don't want my employers to see this.