Sun inches toward low-cost computing

SAN FRANCISCO - Sun Microsystems Inc. demonstrated Oracle Corp.'s new database software running on a cluster of its Intel Corp.-based servers this week, its latest step toward offering customers a low-cost alternative to its proprietary Unix servers.

Sun showed Oracle's 10g database, unveiled at this week's OracleWorld show, running on a cluster of SunFire V65x servers and Red Hat Inc.'s Linux operating system. The configuration also used new clustering capabilities in Oracle10g and high-speed Infiniband switches to boost throughput between the systems.

Sun makes the bulk of its money selling Unix servers based on its SPARC chips and Solaris operating system, and the Intel Corp.-Linux combination has been widely seen as a threat to its core business. Nevertheless, Sun recently launched two servers of its own based on Intel chips, which it offers with Linux or Solaris.

One analyst commended Sun for its apparent show of support for Intel and Linux at OracleWorld. Others saw a vendor responding reluctantly to pressure -- both from the market and from its long-time ally Oracle, which has become a big proponent of Intel servers -- and said Sun needs to articulate its low-end strategy more clearly before customers will buy into it.

Sun's Intel-based servers top out currently at one-processor and two-processor machines. It needs to spell out plans to offer four-way and eight-way systems in order to show customers that it will offer them a path for growing their businesses, said Bill Claybrook, a research director for Linux and grid computing at Aberdeen Group Inc.

But Sun has little financial incentive to promote Intel-based servers over its own Unix systems, which produce higher profit margins for the company, noted Gordon Haff, a senior analyst at Illuminata Inc., in Nashua, New Hampshire. Its strategy, therefore, has been to embrace the "Lintel" platform tentatively while promoting Solaris on SPARC as the best choice for its customers, analysts said.

"They are sort of a reluctant Linux company, meaning they don't hate it, but that most people in the company still see Solaris on SPARC as the wave of the future," Claybrook said.

Sun's tepid support for Intel-based platforms puts its goals out of alignment with those of Oracle. The vendors made hay during the dot-com boom selling Oracle's software on Sun's Unix servers, and even today Solaris remains the most popular platform for Oracle database clusters, officials at both companies said. But with spending on large IT projects in decline, Oracle increasingly is promoting Intel-type servers running Linux or Windows as a way to reduce the cost of deploying its software.

"The partnership (between Oracle and Sun) that was so successful during the dot-com bubble has lost a lot of its value, and the thing that has killed it is Intel," said Ted Schadler, a principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And Oracle's low-cost message isn't letting up. If anything, the grid computing model -- in which businesses harness unused computing resources by tying together distributed systems -- is making Oracle more a fan of Intel and Linux.

"We expect some customers to set up grids based on Unix, but ... it doesn't make sense to use a big, expensive OS when you're trying to squeeze out cost, so Linux is a natural choice for the grid," Oracle vice president John Magee said in an interview last week.