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To: Road Walker who wrote (100080)	3/1/2000 8:36:00 AM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 186894

John - re: Solaris on IA64 - it seems logical to me that Sun would do a port of their "X86 Solaris" to IA64 for the same reasons they did the IA32 version - it helps SUNW customers who want and end to end Solaris solution but want less expensive Intel-based products for desktop and peripheral use, and provides an alternative to Linux. SUNW's support model will make a big difference on how well accepted such a product is... The initial IA64 products will be workstations and 4-way servers. My sense is that the "free" Solaris will support a "vanilla" workstation with functionality which is better than Linux, and with real 64 bit capability, which will offer ISVs (who are important drivers of business in the workstation market) to pay attention to both the 64 bit capability, and Solaris-specific features - all good for SUNW. I would expect that there would be a premium version which will cost money and will include more comprehensive support. That strategy allows customers to try Solaris versus Linux (and perhaps also versus Win2K) at no cost. If they like the benefits and want a support model which matches what they would get on "real" Sparc Solaris, they can buy it. There might also be a few features in the 'Paid" version not in the free one, but I can see the strategy working even if the bits are identical. This does drive SUNW to break out software costs on Sparc Solaris, where today most of the costs are hidden as the OS is for the most part bundled with the hardware. I think "Big" Solaris will continue to be a for-pay OS. I don't know which way they would go in the McKinley timeframe, when big IA64 machines will be a lot more visible. It depends a lot on how SUNW sees itself at that time - if they are still largely a hardware company, they may be slow to make the shift, but if they have repositioned as mostly software, services and architecture they may go for a full-up support of big IA64.