Oracle’s hardware business continues to be popular among Federal Government agencies with the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) looking to refresh its existing SPARC Solaris systems.
Sun Microsystems' mishandling of Solaris on the Intel platform left an opening for Linux to become established, when the company's Solaris OS could have won out instead, Sun co-founder and former CEO Scott McNealy said when interviewed Thursday evening by former Sun President Ed Zander at a Silicon Valley business and technology forum.
Oracle executives talked up on Thursday the planned Solaris 11 release due in 2011, with the Unix OS upgrade offering advancements in availability, security, and virtualization.
Oracle has sketched out a five-year road map for Sun's Sparc-based servers, hoping to reassure customers about the future of the platform and reverse a pattern of declining sales.
Frustrated by what they consider poor treatment and lack of interest from Oracle, members of the OpenSolaris Governing Board are essentially delivering an ultimatum to the vendor, asking that it appoint a liaison to the group by no later than Aug. 16, or else the board will be disbanded.