I've said this before: Sun ought to offer its software--including its Solaris operating system--on Intel's 32- and 64-bit architectures. Whether Sun admits it or not, plenty of Solaris shops are trying to figure out their next step: Do they stick with Sparc--or switch? There's something they like about the way Intel system vendors drive down prices by competing with each other. And despite FUD noise levels by Intel's processor competitors (primarily Sun with Sparc and IBM with Power), these shops don't doubt that IA-64 (Intel's 64-bit architecture) will shrink the performance gap, if not close it all together. At the very least, they know that Intel architectures will soon (and perhaps already do) have enough horsepower for some of their less performance-intensive applications.
But, if Sparc is your source and IA-32 or IA-64 is your destination, you don't have a lot of choices for operating systems: Linux, HP-UX, BSD Unix, or Windows. Judging by my mail, none of these would be as ideal as Solaris--if Sun offered it. While all four are respectable alternatives, there's apparently a lot of legacy stuff out there that can't be so easily migrated to another OS. (Not that a lot of stuff wouldn't have to be recompiled anyway.)
Not only would an Intel option for Solaris ease the lives of some Solaris shops, it might not be a bad move for Sun either. With an Intel option for Solaris, Sun has a shot at keeping some customers that are considering the switch. Without such an option, Sun could lose them altogether.
Intel willing to talk
When we interviewed Intel CEO Craig Barrett, he stressed the simplicity of Intel's volume/price/performance business model and opined that the margins on Sun's Sparc-based servers would one day evaporate. Why then, we asked Barrett, did he suppose that Sun wasn't attempting to work more closely with Intel. Barrett mused, "I sometimes sense it is more of a religious issue with Sun than it is a pragmatic business issue." A lot of people outside of Sun, including ZDNet's readers, agree. Indeed, Sun CEO Scott McNealy's devotion to Sparc reminds me of the stubborn captain who never leaves the helm of his ship. Sun's stock has gone down quite a bit, there have been few major course corrections or gambles (like Solaris on Intel), yet McNealy has stood fast every step of the way.
"What if McNealy did call you?" we asked Barrett. He replied: "If he wants--and he's serious about a design win with us--we are willing to talk to him ... We've been there before." While the second part of his answer refers to previous versions of Solaris on Intel, that first part--offering the olive branch to Sun--took us completely off guard.
A few days later, I caught up with Anil Gadre, Sun vice president and general manager in charge of Solaris. That's when the second bombshell hit. According to Gadre, "Solaris 9 for IA-32 and Itanium is baked, ready to go, finished, and waiting." But waiting for what? Gadre says that the work done on IA-32 and IA-64 "was a part of our commitment to the Intel contract a long time ago, but the contract was limited to Itanium and didn't give us rights to [Itanium 2] and beyond. There's no contract to cover the rest of the roadmap." Before Sun can take these to market, said Gadre, "I need a phone call from Intel with an offer of support."
OK, Intel told me it was waiting for a call from Sun, while Sun told me it was waiting for a call from Intel. Could things be any stranger? I decided to call Intel back.
According to Intel spokesperson Seth Walker, "Sun has not shown a serious commitment to supporting Intel. We have heard from customers and ISVs that Solaris development, tuning, and optimization was being done for Sparc first, and then Intel would be later--if at all. That was done repeatedly. Tuning and optimizations [on the Intel platform] were consistently delayed, and we felt that Sun showed no real commitment to development on Intel. Reflecting that lack of commitment, we started to focus our attention on where the action was--Windows, Linux."
Walker went on to say that "Solaris is an enterprise operating system and it's within Sun's control to start selling Solaris for the [Intel architecture]. That is not up to us. They would just need to re-invigorate the agreement that was terminated and, as [Barrett] said, be serious about supporting it."
Intel vs. Sparc support
Intel may have a legitimate gripe. This isn't the first time I've heard about Solaris' Intel support lagging behind Sparc support. ZDNet readers have mentioned this to me numerous times over the years. Also, Dell has several Fortune 500 customers running older versions of Solaris on its hardware, and, according to Dell Vice President Randy Groves, most of these customers have reported the same problem--the feature set was behind Sparc, and that Sun's answer to the problem was to upsell them Sparc.
One reason I called Dell was that if Intel and Sun were able to overcome their impasse, perhaps Dell could become Sun's volume partner. After all, Dell's main enterprise competitors--HP and IBM--sell their own Unix flavors in addition to Linux. If a bunch of Solaris customers were considering a switch to the Intel platform, having Dell involved might give them even more comfort. And it would give Dell a serious Unix option.
According to Groves, "It's not likely that we'd resell Sparc systems. But we'd be interested in selling Solaris on Intel, assuming customers want it. One proof point that customers are interested in the Intel option is that we are seeing customers in the Fortune 500 on Solaris/Sparc that are in the middle of evaluating Oracle on Linux on Dell, and they are motivated by one-third to one-fourth the hardware cost. If Sun changes their attitude, we'd be very interested in working with them."
Wow. Now wouldn't that stir things up a bit? Intel and Sun make that elusive phone call, patch things up, and let bygones be bygones--and Dell becomes a primary channel for Sun while picking up a version of Unix to compete against HP-UX and IBM AIX. Crazier things have happened.
What do you think? Should Sun and Intel cut out the "he said she said" stuff and get on with it? Or should Sun keep Solaris on its Sparc-only course? TalkBack to me, or e-mail me at david.berlind@cnet.com.
