Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Sun Pioneers Shift to Free and Open Source Software

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced two landmark moves in the
battle to create the software platform of choice for the
next-generation of the Internet. First, having seen tremendous
momentum with the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS) as free and open
source software, Sun is making the Java(TM) Enterprise System, Sun
N1(TM) Management software and Sun developer tools available at no
cost for both development and deployment and further, is reaffirming
its commitment to open source this software.

Second, Sun is announcing that it is integrating all of this software
along with the Solaris OS into the Solaris Enterprise System, the only
comprehensive and open infrastructure software platform available
today.

With this announcement, Sun is creating the no cost and open
alternative to the Windows environment. The Solaris Enterprise System
has all of the benefits of an integrated offering while still enabling
customers the flexibility to address their requirements by deploying
the specific components they need into alternative operating systems.
In addition to being combined under a single distribution with the
Solaris Enterprise System, the Sun Java Enterprise System and the Sun
developer tools can be used at no cost on other existing
multi-platform environments including Windows, HP-UX and Linux.

Sun is also demonstrating its commitment to the developer community
and to the success of Sun's customers by working with its extensive
partner ecosystem to continue to deliver a full-set of advanced and
superior support services. The single, no cost distribution allows
developers and customers a risk-free way to get unencumbered access to
truly business-critical infrastructure software and then engage with
Sun at a point in the life-cycle when they need access to development
and deployment services. This significantly lowers their risk of
adoption and enables a dramatic increase in the number of companies
and individuals who can obtain a complete, integrated portfolio of
enterprise- class software.

"With more than 3.4M Solaris licenses and nearly one million Java
Enterprise System subscribers, customers and developers around the
world have asked us to take the next logical step -- combining the
world's fastest growing open source operating system with the world's
most complete and ready to deploy infrastructure software platform,"
said Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun. "100% of our
customers are deploying web infrastructures and asking for relief from
onerous licenses and system integration activity. With our announced
intent to open source the entirety of our software offerings, every
single developer across the world now has access to the most
sophisticated platform available for web 1.0, 2.0 and beyond."

Included at no cost in the new Solaris Enterprise System are:

* The award winning and open sourced Solaris 10 OS, with the recently
announced PostgreSQL database;

* The entire Sun Java Enterprise System infrastructure software
platform, including the Sun Java(TM) Identity Management Suite, Sun
Java(TM) Integration Suite, Sun Java(TM) Communications Suite, Sun
Java(TM) Application Platform Suite, Sun Java(TM) Availability Suite
and Sun Java(TM) Web Infrastructure Suite;

* The N1 Management Software including the Sun N1(TM) System Manager,
the Sun N1(TM) Service Provisioning System, the Sun N1(TM) Grid
Engine;

* All tools for C, C++ and Java development, including Sun Studio 11,
Sun Java(TM) Studio Enterprise 8 and Sun Java(TM) Studio Creator;

* SunRay(TM) Server software; * Sun(TM) Secure Global Desktop Software.

Sun is offering a risk-free opportunity to explore, develop and deploy
on Sun's pre-tested and pre-integrated software platform. This is a
complete platform which incorporates Sun's existing and recently
acquired technology, including its market-leading identity management
products, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based integration and
composite application products from Sun's recent acquisition of
SeeBeyond, and the remote secure display capabilities from Sun's
acquisition of Tarantella.

Sun is also rolling out a vast number of new, complementary services
that span from early developer training and education to sophisticated
remote and managed services to automate processes that are currently
manually accomplished. Sun's new Customer Network Services can provide
administrators and developers with automated support for operations
management, including patches, upgrades, updates and warranty, without
the high-costs associated with professional services.

Sun has committed to open sourcing its entire software portfolio using
industry-standard open source licensing models to allow customers to
have easy and broad access to all of its source code.

Many of the components of Sun's integrated platform are already
available as open source, including the Solaris OS, the Sun Java(TM)
Application Server, the NetBeans(TM) software tools, and several key
underlying services like single sign-on capabilities and the ability
to connect multiple, independent applications in a standard way. This
is a trend where Sun continues to be a pioneer.

www.au.sys-con.com

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