Sun turns Microsoft Windows server OEM Having recently rediscovered itself as a systems company, Sun Microsystems has been welcomed into Microsoft's vast and growing family of OEM partners. Expanding the companies' three-year-old interoperability pact, Sun has agreed to ship Microsoft's dated but important Windows Server 2003 operating system pre-installed on its …
If this is like the Sun on-off, flippity-flop, "I-love-you-I-hate-you" relationship with Linux, next week there will be a Sun exec standing up and saying something like; "Let me be really clear about our Windows strategy. We don't have one. We don't at all. We do not believe that Windows plays a role on the server. Period. If you want to buy it, we will sell it to you, but we believe that Solaris is a better alternative...” Apologies to Mr Schwarz in advance.
Don't worry, they don't. It's just a way of getting purple boxes in different places. However, don't forget that with Sun, you're getting their (still generally excellent, even if first line is in Poland now) hardware support, which is way better than most of the x86 box shifters. Server 2003 performs as well on Sun x86 kit as it does on anything else. *coughuseSolariscough*
SUN is Microsofts gateway to the Enterprise Server market and Microsoft is SUNs gateway to sustained profitability....
MS doesn't worry SUN because MS doesn't produce anything that could be termed Enterprise Class (though Exchange 'may' be getting there).
and
SUN doesn't worry Microsoft because let's face it SUN never has been very good at going after the SME market which is where Microsoft lives.
The truth is that I really do wish, as a system architect, that SUNs hardware expertise was more available to the Windows server environment. The only innovation going on out there (in the server sphere) is from IBM and SUN, HP and DELL are just box shifters with even worse support departments.
In the big scheme of things will SUN care what OS you put on one of it's boxes? Only as a matter of pride as long as the hardware revenue keeps rolling in.
As a UNIX/Linux man I hate the idea of promoting Microshite bloatware, but I understand the need for profit.
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