Sun Launches Solaris 9 OE As Web Services Platform

Sun Microsystems

Key features of Solaris 9 OE, launched by departing President and COO Ed Zander on Sun's campus here, are built-in technologies to help solution providers build Web services, including a built-in version of Sun's J2EE 1.3-compliant application server, Sun ONE Application Server 7, Platform Edition; the Sun ONE Directory Server for network identity; and XML support, including Java API for XML Parsing (JAXP), Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM), Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) and SOAP 2.2.

"This is not an operating-system announcement," said Zander, who plans to retire from Sun in July. "This is a different kind of product."

Zander said Wednesday's Solaris 9 OE announcement was "as big a milestone" as the first launch of Solaris 10 years ago. He said Solaris 9 OE represents a new way of thinking about network operating systems.

"I don't believe we'll talk about operating systems in [a few years," said Zander. "What we'll talk about will be Web-services platforms."

The built-in features of the industry's leading Unix operating environment could pose a problem for other vendors building J2EE-based Web services platforms, however. Most affected could be San Jose, Calif.-based BEA Systems, which is one of Sun's closest partners and deploys most of its WebLogic J2EE app servers on Solaris running on Sun hardware, observers said.

At the Solaris 9 OE launch, Anil Gadre, Sun vice president of Sun software, maintained Sun's longtime position that its Sun ONE software stack, including Solaris, continues to be "integratable," and that competing products from vendors such as BEA will easily run on top of or alongside Sun ONE.

John Kiger, director of product marketing at BEA, said Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun and BEA will continue to have a mutually beneficial relationship. Sun's primary goal is to sell server hardware, and sales of BEA WebLogic contribute greatly to this goal, he said.

"We continue to have a great relationship with Sun because the Sun sales guys know we sell more Sun hardware than any ISV partner other than Oracle," Kiger said. "The Sun sales guys know that. . . . It's BEA and Sun together. That's how Sun beat IBM [in server sales."

But Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Current Analysis, said the relationship between Sun and BEA is delicate because "they need each other, but on the other hand, they are competing."

"Practically speaking, the obvious thing they're doing is putting an app server [into Solaris, and BEA is in the business of selling app servers," Willett said. "Sun definitely wants a larger market share in the whole middleware space [with its integration, portal and development tools. They want to sell that middleware layer."

Research firm Gartner this week released new app-server market-share numbers that show BEA maintaining its lead in the app-server market, with IBM a close second and Sun third.

According to the Gartner report, however, while both BEA and IBM gained market share, BEA gained 1 percentage point to 34 percent, IBM gained 9 percentage points to 31 percent, Sun lost 1 percentage point in market share, dropping from 10 percent market share to 9 percent.