Should you buy the latest version of the Solaris Unix operating
system now that it includes a free application server?
After more than a year of industry speculation and denials, Sun
Microsystems will bundle the Sun ONE Application Server and Sun ONE
Directory Server with the Solaris 9 Operating Environment.
Sun has also improved scalability in Solaris 9 through better
threading, support for Web services, and more self-tuning, which
lowers administrative cost. But is the inclusion of a free
application server and directory server a compelling reason to buy
Solaris 9?
At first glance, customers appear to benefit from getting two major
pieces of software for free that previously were not. Further, if
the application and directory server are well integrated with the
Operating System (OS), performance should improve because of lower
overhead.
However, although the application server is free, it can only run
on one server, which limits its scalability and failover
capability. Enterprise users will have to upgrade to a for-fee
server to get clustering. Hewlett-Packard (HP) also bundles a basic
version of its application server with the HP-UX OS, but users we
spoke with needed to upgrade to a for-fee server.
Finally, although Sun says it supports Web services with Solaris 9,
it doesn't support Universal Description, Discovery, and
Integration (UDDI), which is important because it allows you to
securely store Web services. Even though the bundled application
server has limitations, it is appropriate for the 20% of shops that
don't require load balancing.
Initial user feedback has been mixed. One Application Service
Provider (ASP) that uses BEA Systems products on HP-UX said that it
might consider Solaris 9 for a cheap, shrink-wrapped system, but
otherwise it was sticking with what it has and knows.
So what does Solaris 9 mean to the competition and its
customers?
BEA - BEA and IBM lead the application server market. Our
survey of application servers shows that cost and existing
infrastructure are the primary determinants of future application
server purchases. Although BEA is pricy, it is well entrenched and
seen as a premium offering. Further, BEA is not tied to any
application server or database, which is important to heterogeneous
shops. Although Sun has stated that Solaris will continue to
support all application servers, users may view their bundling as
hurting heterogeneous support.
IBM - Sun, HP, and Microsoft now offer a basic version of
their own application servers with their OSs. Although IBM says
customers don't want an OS/application server bundle, we expect
competitive pressure to force IBM to offer a basic version of
Websphere with AIX.
Like Sun, HP, and Microsoft, the basic version of the application
server will be used as a hook to get users to buy versions of the
application server and sister products like portals, integration,
and Business Process Management (BPM).
Oracle/Sybase - Oracle and, to some extent, Sybase have
application server sales that are influenced by their databases. We
would expect both vendors to offer stripped-down versions of the
application server for free in response to Sun's and HP's
offerings.
What should users do? For companies that primarily have Solaris,
the bundling of application and directory servers into Solaris 9
should be investigated. Users that only require a single server or
are looking for a low-cost mobile or disconnected application
server should also consider it. For everyone else, we see no reason
to change course.
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