Sun releases Solaris version 9

Peter Henderson

SAN FRANCISCO: Sun Microsystems Inc. debuted on Wednesday its biggest

software upgrade in years, a new version of its flagship Solaris operating

systems, which the computer maker is trying to integrate with popular upstart

Linux.

Aiming to simplify networks choked by many layers of software, Sun has

incorporated security and management features that are usually separate programs

into the operating system, the software which sits between applications and the

machine, it said.

The roughly 300 new features of Solaris version 9 would help networks run

with less intervention from administrators, a key to Sun's vision of the future

and a potential cost savings for customers. It would also provide most users

with a handful of "killer" improvements, said IDC analyst Al Gillen.

Sun soared to renown as companies built networks and the Internet using its

powerful work stations, but has had a hard time recovering since the economy

slowed and the Internet boom collapsed about a year ago. One element of Sun's

historic success was its single-minded devotion to Solaris, a Unix-type

operating system, but it has sown confusion among analysts recently by promising

to come out with a Linux low-end computer expected in July.

Linux is a newer but so far less powerful than Unix that has captured the

hearts of programmers, since it is not owned by a single company and developed

collaboratively, and corporations enamored of Linux's price: it is free. Total

Linux revenue nearly doubled in the first quarter from a year ago and it is

still growing fast, Gartner Inc. server analyst Shahin Khan said.

While some critics say Linux will devour the entire Unix market, Sun's

operating systems chief, Anil Gadre, says, "Fundamentally Linux and Solaris

are two brothers." Both systems compete with Microsoft Corp. Windows and

other systems, he said in an interview ahead of the Solaris launch. Sun was

developing Linux for network "edge" services, like print serving and

mail serving, while Solaris, much more powerful, handled bigger computing tasks,

he said.

"We are a very practical company at the end of the day," Gadre

said. Competitors International Business Machines Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co.

have supported Linux for some time. IBM, which released a more modest update of

its Unix operating system, AIX, on Wednesday also, claims it is far ahead of Sun

in Linux and "middleware" of programs that let programs on a network

work together.

"They don't have the middleware and they are late on Linux," said

vice president Surjit Chana, head of marketing for the high-end Unix computers

for IBM. Technology researcher Bill Claybrook of Aberdeen said that Sun would

fall behind quickly if it kept its Linux focused on the low end, since Linux was

bound to get more sophisticated.

But he did not expect them to do so. "I think that Sun will be

relatively aggressive in the Linux area," he said. Sun also plans to make

its own distribution version of Linux, giving it more room to incorporate some

of the features from Solaris over time, he said.

"Of all the companies that are involved in Linux -- there is the new HP,

Dell, IBM and now Sun -- they are the only ones that have their own

distribution," he said. Linux is maturing slowly, and it won't be able to

take on tasks currently done by high-end Unix computers until around the end of

the decade, he said.






Sun faced a dilemma about what hardware to use for its Linux systems, since
selling hardware has been key to Sun's profits, he said. But, he said, "Sun

is the Unix company. There is no reason they can't become the Linux company if

they want to."