Sun changes direction
Sun has announced it is to integrate its software stack, open source it and will start selling support for companies using it:
The big news had everyone in the IT industry speculating all week, trying to guess what Sun was up to. Vendors, PR agencies, and users I know were guessing all sorts of things, but not one of us guessed what Sun actually announced. My favorite speculation was that Sun would actually exit the software business, which seemed so unlikely. But ironically, Sun has indeed let go of its software and fully embraced a services model like the entire open source Linux stack does. In a sense, Sun has exited the software business as we know it and has entered the software business as it hopes we will come to know it.
The company is also fully opening up the spec for its UltraSPARC T1 chip, with the OpenSPARC project
Sun Microsystems Inc. is looking to ramp up interest in its new UltraSPARC T1 processor by open-sourcing parts of the multicore chip.
At the company’s quarterly event Tuesday in New York City, Chairman Scott McNealy introduced the OpenSPARC project. Sun will publish specifications for the chip—formerly code-named Niagara—including the design source, verification suite and simulation models.
In addition, Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., will publish the instruction set specification for UltraSPARC Architecture 2005 and a Solaris port, McNealy said.
Red Hat has announced it is to start offering certification and support services for the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack in the first quarter of 2006. This is from CRN:
Such service offerings were pioneered by innovative startups such as SpikeSource and SourceLabs.
During the first calendar quarter of 2006, Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat will begin providing three service offerings for the core LAMP Web application stack, as well as for Java and enterprise Java open-source middleware stacks.