Sun to Introduce Newest Version of Solaris Today
The New York Times
November 15, 2004
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 14 - Sun Microsystems plans to unveil on Monday the latest version of its flagship Solaris operating system. It also intends to offer a free version of the program to make it more attractive to corporate and academic computer users.
The program will not be commercially available until the end of January, Sun executives said on Friday, but versions of Solaris 10 have been available for trial use for almost a year.
The pricing shift is an effort to put pressure on software competitors like Microsoft and Red Hat, the biggest distributor of the free Linux operating system. The shift could also broaden the market for Solaris by making it easier to try out.
Sun currently has about a million Solaris users around the world, according to an estimate by the International Data Corporation, a market research firm. "They're looking for ubiquity," said Jean S. Bozman, a computer industry analyst at I.D.C.
Pricing and support options offered by software providers have become increasingly complex as open-source software has become a viable option for use in running big corporate data centers. Companies like Red Hat, for example, generally distribute a free version of Linux, while charging a purchase license and support fees for a version that is more commonly used commercially.
Sun is trying to make its pricing attractive and to take advantage of the fact that it offers hardware, service and software on a one-stop shopping basis, something that some of its competitors can't do.
The company, under the direction of its president, Jonathan Schwartz, is also pushing toward a range of new pricing schemes similar to those used in consumer industries like the cellphone and cable businesses.
"From a pricing perspective, Solaris will be less expensive in any category than our Linux competitors," said John P. Loiacono, Sun's executive vice president for software. Service and support for Solaris 10 will cost between $120 and $360 a year for each licensed machine.
Sun also offers a corporate software package for a fee of $100 per employee per year. Its version of Linux and Open Office, called Java Desktop, costs $50 a user annually.
Sun recently said it would offer, at the cost of $1 per processor hour, a wholesale utility computing service to be marketed to corporate computer users and software service providers like Salesforce.com.
nytimes.com
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
