Boston – Two longtime rivals in computing, IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., plan to cooperate on server technologies, a move that could put pressure on competitor Hewlett- Packard Co.
Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz called it a “comprehensive relationship” that “represents a tectonic shift in the market landscape.” The collaboration announced Thursday will enable Sun’s Solaris operating system to run on IBM servers. Among other things, that means customers that run Sun servers will be able to switch to Big Blue’s hardware without having to rewrite any programs.
At first, this will be possible on IBM’s “x” series of servers, which also run Microsoft Windows or the open-source Linux system. But eventually, IBM hopes to bring Solaris to the mainframe, the big multitasking machines that have been one of the company’s core profit centers for decades.
(One of the biggest bashers of the mainframe as a supposed dinosaur used to be Sun’s former CEO, Scott McNealy.)
IBM has been expanding the kinds of programs that can run on mainframes, to encourage customers to consolidate multiple servers onto these bigger machines as a cost-saving move.
These steps threaten to take Sun servers out of action in favor of IBM machines. But Sun can gain from this partnership by collecting Solaris service subscriptions from customers that run that operating system on IBM hardware. Otherwise, Sun risked losing customers entirely to IBM.
The arrangement is in keeping with Sun’s strategy to rebound from a devastating slump in the first part of the decade by broadening its role as a software vendor.
