Sun readies Solaris counterpunch to .Net

From...

By Michael Vizard,
Mark Jones,
and Dan Neel

(IDG) -- For years Microsoft has argued that its homogenous approach to enterprise computing is inherently easier to manage and has lower maintenance costs than the more open computing environment evangelized by Sun Microsystems.

But Sun is about to fundamentally challenge that assumption by automating the change management procedures for applications that reside on Solaris and by extending the system management services for Solaris to the entire computing environment, including third-party application servers that run on top of Solaris.

This spring Sun will launch iChange, a repository to keep track of all changes made across the entire Solaris operating environment, said Andy Ingram, Sun director of marketing for enterprise server products.

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Once deployed, this repository will become a place where IT managers can store system and software configurations. In addition, IT managers will be able to take advantage of the Flash feature in Solaris to automatically replicate those system and server configurations across a distributed enterprise. This ability will substantially reduce the costs associated with running a diverse computing environment made of best-of-breed components on top of Solaris.

"To us, it's not just about the operating system; it's about managing the total environment," Ingram said.

To complement this capability, Sun also plans to roll out a service that will allow customers to automatically share best configuration practices with one another, Ingram said.

These capabilities are crucial underpinnings that will provide the foundation for Sun's push into distributed grid computing, he said. A core premise of this developing computing model is that servers will automatically come online to provide additional capacity as needed. But that process cannot happen until servers can dynamically discover and replicate new environments.

Ingram said that these and other capabilities inherent in Solaris will provide the foundation that will allow Sun and its allies to counter the vision put forth by Microsoft in its .Net architecture, which ultimately envisions a world where applications automatically discover and integrate with one another using Web services.

In contrast, Sun will use Web services to link loosely coupled applications, while relying on Java to link tightly coupled applications.

"In Microsoft's view of the world, everything is based on XML and loosely coupled applications. We see a need for loosely coupled applications and tightly coupled applications using Java," Ingram said.

Industry analysts said the war over the next generation of distributed computing between Microsoft and Sun is far from over.

Rikki Kirzner, research director at IDC in Mountain View, California, said the battle will not be won on the basis of one or two tools. Market penetration, cost-effectiveness of implementation, and ease of use will be the critical customer drivers, she said. "The companies have to make the solutions real," Kirzner said, commenting that vendors need to do more than simply adopt standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).

Microsoft, IBM, and Computer Associates are also working on technology to control and manage distributed computing environments to deliver Web services. But Sun may beat its rivals to the punch. Sun's hardware and OS components are stand-alone and proprietary, making the groundwork for development specific and more efficient, said Gordon Haff, a senior analyst at Illuminata, in Nashua, New Hampshire.