Today, we feature a mini Q&A with Vikas Deolaliker, Group Product Manager of the Competitive Strategy Group at Sun Microsystems. We discuss a number of issues that arise on Sun’s stategy in light of the recent releases of the AMD Opteron and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. We also get a taste of Sun’s position on the limited hardware support of Sun Solaris 9 on x86.1. With the Opteron and Itanium machines moving on taking more market in the 64-bit space, and with the launch of Windows Server 2003 64-bit soon, how does this impact the SPARC and Solaris markets?
Vikas Deolaliker: The only reason Itanium 2 and Opteron are getting any attention is that they have some degree of compatibility with 32- bit x86 applications — much more so for Opteron than Itanium.
However, for the enterprise market 64-bit applications are what matters, not 32-bit: large databases and complex integrated applications need the larger address space. Itanium 2 and Opteron lack the 64-bit ecosystem which SPARC has been fostering for over a decade now. Because Sun is a systems company, it creates the whole system- not just the chips, software or hardware. Sun’s advantage is acutely felt by the x86 64-bit world as evidenced below:
– Of the approximately 2500 applications available on Windows 2003 (according to Bill Veghte of Microsoft), how many run on the 64-bit version of Windows 2003 which support Itanium 2? Exactly zero. Even the 64-bit SQL
Server to be announced on April 24 runs only on Itanium not Opteron.
– Of the over 100 x86 system vendors, how many have announced boxes based on Itanium 2? None to date.
– On a cost basis an Itanium 2 system is very comparable to a SPARC based system. The real competition then is not between Itanium 2 and UltraSPARC but between Sun system and any vendor’s x86 system. This competition is not new to Sun; Sun has been winning here for 20 years now.
[Vikas Deolaliker statement about 64-bit Linux is now removed following Sun’s request.]
2. Especially with this release, Windows Server 2003 has added a number of easy to use GUI administration tools (also made available to Windows XP PRO users). Is Sun going to offer similar GUI tools to easily configure and
administer any aspect of the OS and its services?
Vikas Deolaliker: Yes. However, the management at the enterprise level is beyond one single OS or single machine. It is about infrastructure as a whole. Think of the difference between your garage at home and a parking garage in the city. Those two serve the same purpose: “Park you car” — but they are based on an entirely different system. Your home garage may have a user friendly GUI like a garage opener, but you can’t have that in the public garage. So expecting enterprise level tools to offer user friendly GUI tools is actually not a realistic expectation. In fact, GUI is the least intensive engineering work involved when designing a management system.
A distinction needs to made here between “easy” and “not complex.” Sun is addressing the complexity in the infrastructure management through projects like N1. N1 is dealing with complex issues that Microsoft is not even aware of and cannot address effectively because they are not a systems company and
don’t offer servers.
3: The main problem with Solaris 9 x86 is the [pretty bad] hardware compatibility list, that seems to have stuck around 1999 hardware-wise. Are there any plans to truly bring Solaris 9 x86 up to speed with newer hardware, Hyperthreading support, more graphic card support etc?
Vikas Deolaliker: Solaris x86 is 32-bit and targeted towards the edge server market. Multi-threading type technologies are more appropriate at the core of the enterprise where transactions run. At the edge the only thing that matters is size of the kernel. In addition, SPARC’s MT support helps Solaris’s MT support — x86 processors are not big on accelerating MT yet.
Regarding graphics cards, I think Linux is better at the desktop and should support all the graphics cards and peripherals. Open source is a very efficient way of developing drivers for peripherals.
4: Does Microsoft have plans to invest in the infrastructure to support the enterprise at a level it has come to expect? (Minimize complexity, dependable service and support, predictability)
Vikas Deolaliker: The infrastructure to support the enterprise market is complex and expensive. It takes a long lead time to create such an infrastructure. So far, Microsoft has not shown any signs that it is building such an infrastructure. In fact, the only infrastructure moves Microsoft has recently made are targeted towards their business solutions business unit. Microsoft recently re-orged their sales organization by moving the head of
sales to run the sales organization for the business solutions group. Yet the company claims that Windows 2003 is targeted at the enterprise.
5: What has Microsoft done to address enterprise level security requirements? A Trusted OS? Adhering to Common Criteria Certification? How is their offering compares to Sun and where does it differ? Microsoft’s efforts in security are driven primarily by need to plug security holes in their current products although they claim more.
Vikas Deolaliker: Windows 2003 was originally meant to be released in 2002 but Microsoft (the famous Bill Gates Security Memo) delayed the release saying they would be reviewing the code for security.
After all the reviews, the security functionality is not very impressive. In fact the security in Windows 2003 is achieved simply by limiting the functionality of components that increase security risks.
For example, now:
– IIS 6.0 is more secure but not as much as Apache (the free Web server)
– Telnet is not installed by default and runs in low-priority
– IE 6.0 is installed by default but with limited functionality
– Finally the secure configuration wizard will not be available on April 24 but a few months later
Lately, Microsoft has also launched a marketing campaign to claim thought leadership for security. This campaign was called “Palladium” or Next Generation Platform for Secure Computing. It is still in early vaporware stage; not even the functionality has been decided upon.
Sun has deployed trusted versions of Solaris for years now. In Solaris 9, Sun included certain features of Trusted Solaris into the base Solaris 9.
is by far the best when it comes to reliability and scalability. Only problem is it is not easy to use, and the biggest problem is that its more expensive than most of their competitors, but IMO for a good reason.
I do think that for small businesses and personal servers Linux is the way to go. But, for large companies SUN and FreeBSD are better.
Also, IMO the linux distribution makers like SUSE and Redhat are really taking advantage of OSS by not releasing the source for the 64 bit kernel, they get almost everything from bolunteers and than do not release the source to the 64 bit kernel! They should differentiate themselves through integration of the best technologies in the best ways and support.
I wouldn’t want to say Vikas Deolaliker lied, but what would you call this?
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/2.1AW/en/os/ia64/… (2.4.18-e.12.src.rpm)
VMS is the thing you want to run if you want real reliability and I also choose HP-UX or AIX way before I choose Solaris. Solaris is good, but HP-UX and AIX is in my opinion much better.
I like SUN and Solaris very much. I also hate M$ Windows. These guys, M$ believe they can produce enterprise products like SUN with frinendly colorfoul user interfaces LOL. An os without command line is not an os.
An os without command line is not an os.
so we will see a command line in everyone os in the future? forever?
How do you come to that conclusion? the people who whinged and moaned about memory problems a couple of years ago were Joe Cheapskates who wanted to cut corners and not buy SUN approved memory. They caused their own problems, not SUN.
As for ease of use, I think someone needs to take this young man (Sun’s Vikas Deolaliker) into a room and give him a flogging. Obviously he doesn’t realise that 1/2 the problem with admining a UNIX server is the amount of time and money required to be invested into Joe “wet behind the ears” technician to get them up to speed with UNIX fundaments. I’m not saying that we should get to MSCE levels, but for goodness sake, why can’t I administrate SUN Screen via their management console (MC)? setup a non-postscript printer via MC? They need to stop making excuses and start fixing. Instead of blaming Microsoft, work out why you’re loosing market share.
What a load of bull about the the 64bit kernel’s not being available as an above post show, just look at Redhat’s ftp.
As for kernel.org that doesn’t have any compiled kernel’s on it (32bit or 64bit) it has the kernel code, which you can easyily take and compile on your 64bit system ,well Itanium is support in 2.4 i don’t think the changes for Opteron have being fully backported from 2.5
Yeah, 64-bit linux is under the GPL, anyone can get the source for it and build it with GCC targeting a 64-bit architecture such as Alpha, sparc, IA-64, or AMD64. Kernel.org may not be hosting the ports to those architectures, but the code is freely available. If Suse and RedHat didn’t release the code, they would be in violation of the GPL.
You could have also asked in the question if they would support current laptops?
There could be some advantages to having Solaris x86 on laptops.
I haven’t really thought it through much yet, but I have read posts here in the past how people would love to have that match.
How about a Sparc laptop would it be possible? How are the CPU thermally? I don’t it just sounds cool.
…so that’s why the hardware support is lousy? I guess the edge can be an LX50 and not much else? But it’s the size of the kernel that matters, right?
OpenBSD has a small kernel, better hardware support, and has a better out of the box development environment. A properly tuned Linux, NetBSD, or FreeBSD works just fine on the edge also, and give you a good deal of freedom and flexibility in terms of hardware and software.
I can understand why Sun would say, sure, Linux has the desktop, so why bother with graphics drivers (which isn’t a problem anyway; XFree runs under Solaris) but I don’t understand how they feel they can compete on edge services. I’m also pretty disappointed in the tone of this interview, and it’s the tone we keep hearing from Sun, marginalizing Free and Open Source operating systems and perfectly capable hardware.
I would call it a lie. He spreads misinformation about the competition and claims that Linux for x86-64 is not free software, which is wrong. You can download it, like gcc and a few other tools, from http://www.x86-64.org/cvs. It is under GPL, like all other Linux kernels.
And if a manager at Sun’s Competitive Strategy Group doesn’t know better and does not even understand the GPL, then this tells a lot about Sun’s competence… on the other hand, who cares… how many years will it take until Linux+x86 has eaten up all of Sun’s market share in the workstation, low-end and mid-range server markets? 3 years? 2 years? And I doubt that it is economically viable to produce a CPU like UltraSPARC only for high-end markets.
A company called Tabpole sell Ultra Sparc equiped laptops. They use the UltraSparc IIe chip which is designed for embedded devices and telecoms equipment. IIRC, their power consumption I think is 13watts.
Thanks CooCoo. Are you a regular at Whirlpool too.
Microsoft and Sun’s business models are obsolete because they support closed implementation. Sun wishes that 64-bit Linux was a closed implementation, because that would mean that Sun and Microsoft would be able to stay in business. Even lemmings (Microsoft users) who are racing to throw themselves off of a cliff will only be willing to waist two or three of their nine lives supporting a futile non responsible position.
…if they don’t stop ignoring the IT world around. Simply said, now I know why is Sun struggling so badly – you can’t make a good bussiness without paying attention to changes in the bussiness’ environment!
I agree that Linux and *BSD based solutions are going to wipe out Sun’s makret share. Not that I’m happy with it…
Both Sun and Microsoft still have their object-oriented user-mode platforms (Java and .Net). Now these platforms are specialized libraries, that are implemented as reusable frameworks. You can reuse the framework design through inheritance. Linux does not have a user-mode business platform…yet. I would like to see this vendor research and development collected by a guided open soruce effort into a highly accessible democratic public framework which businesses can choose to integrate and use for solution development. This idea is a stake in the heart of vendors like Sun and Microsoft.
Not to sound ignorant, but what is whirlpool? I’ve heard of an expo called “whirlpool”, however, is that the same thing?
What do you call Apache with all the extensions and so forth? There are already a number of alternatives to C#, for example, Python as one example, Ruby would be another, Mono is not only implementing the standard ECMA standard but building unique “UNIX Only” features onto it, such as POSIX security which Windows no longer supports (taken out in the XP/2003 release and sold as a seperate package, Services For Unix).
Vikas Deolaliker: The only reason Itanium 2 and Opteron are getting any attention is that they have some degree of compatibility with 32- bit x86 applications — much more so for Opteron than Itanium.
Untrue. Both chips are new 64 bit chips from the #1 and #2 microprocessor vendors.
The Opteron has great price/performance, far better than ANY offering from Sun. And it has the benefit of easy migration from 32 bit x86 infrastructure to 64 bit x86 infrastructure.
The Itanium is a new fresh design that is doing very well on performance benchmarks. The top Itanium processors outperform anything available from Sun. And when Intel gets the prices down with Deerfield, the Intel price/performance will be very good as well.
However, for the enterprise market 64-bit applications are what matters, not 32-bit: large databases and complex integrated applications need the larger address space. Itanium 2 and Opteron lack the 64-bit ecosystem which SPARC has been fostering for over a decade now. Because Sun is a systems company, it creates the whole system- not just the chips, software or hardware. Sun’s advantage is acutely felt by the x86 64-bit world as evidenced below:
Both AMD and Intel have NEW 64 bit systems on the market. Intel has many high-quality building blocks in place for Itanium and AMD has gone out the gate with tremendous price/performance and will be shipping everything from single processor Opterons to 8-way Opterons this year. While this doesn’t compare to the giant top-end Sun systems, the volume server market is exactly what AMD is focusing on. Intel with Itanium is going after Sun’s market with some of the massive Itanium systems, notably the soon to ship NEC system which just got top marks on the TPC-C benchmark.
The inherent weakness is Sun’s “whole system” approach is that they have accumulated fat at every level and at every juncture in their ‘system’. The company can hardly move forward. They are a giant ponderous pig and can barely ship product these days. When is the last time Sun came out with a world class C++ compiler that can make their hardware really shine? The enterprise of today doesn’t want to spend enormous extra dollars on Sun machines because the performance just isn’t there for most apps.
– Of the approximately 2500 applications available on Windows 2003 (according to Bill Veghte of Microsoft), how many run on the 64-bit version of Windows 2003 which support Itanium 2? Exactly zero. Even the 64-bit SQL Server to be announced on April 24 runs only on Itanium not Opteron.
This sentence doesn’t even make sense. 64 bit SQL Server runs on Itanium now and will run on Opteron soon. Exchange 2000 runs on Opteron now. As Microsoft’s 64 bit server OS is just shipping, Sun’s comment is full of denial. Within a year, Microsoft will have many apps on 64 bit Windows.
– Of the over 100 x86 system vendors, how many have announced boxes based on Itanium 2? None to date.
Wow. A blatant LIE — one of the most wonderful elements of the Sun corporate culture. HP has been shipping Itanium systems for a long time. And are shipping both workstation and server Itanium2 machines. HP’s Itanium2 workstations offer great performance for the price.
– On a cost basis an Itanium 2 system is very comparable to a SPARC based system. The real competition then is not between Itanium 2 and UltraSPARC but between Sun system and any vendor’s x86 system. This competition is not new to Sun; Sun has been winning here for 20 years now.
Another vaporous statement. Itanium’s roadmap includes massive drops in price. Sun’s roadmap does not. Sun thinks their 64 bit systems are always going to competing with 32 bit x86 systems? Does this guy even realize that AMD is shipping a great 64 bit system today? Or that Intel has been shipping 64 bit systems for 2 years? Sun has not been winning any sort of 64 bit battle with AMD/Intel and the x86 vendors. This battle is new and is just starting to be waged this year.
– Linux on 64-bit machines is no longer “free” nor open source. The 64-bit kernels are not available at http://www.kernel.org they are proprietary to SuSE and Red Hat. Also, SuSE charges around $450/CPU. The key advantage that Linux has in 32-bit computing is lost at the 64-bit level.
Another set of lies from Sun. One can download 64 bit Linux from various sources. And more importantly, an enterprise can buy ONE copy of Linux and duplicate it internally.
Sun/Solaris win no price comparisons with Linux. From initial cost, to upgrades, to support costs, Linux is a fraction of the cost of Solaris.
(continued)
Vikas Deolaliker: Yes. However, the management at the enterprise level is beyond one single OS or single machine. It is about infrastructure as a whole. Think of the difference between your garage at home and a parking garage in the city. Those two serve the same purpose: “Park you car” — but they are based on an entirely different system. Your home garage may have a user friendly GUI like a garage opener, but you can’t have that in the public garage. So expecting enterprise level tools to offer user friendly GUI tools is actually not a realistic expectation. In fact, GUI is the least intensive engineering work involved when designing a management system.
It sounds like Sun doesn’t understand their enterprise customers and this is why Microsoft server shipments are growing so much. Easy to use GUI tools not a rational expectation? Hmmmm. Sun does make a lot of money on their hypercomplex HighMarginware.
A distinction needs to made here between “easy” and “not complex.” Sun is addressing the complexity in the infrastructure management through projects like N1. N1 is dealing with complex issues that Microsoft is not even aware of and cannot address effectively because they are not a systems company and don’t offer servers.
Blatant misdirection from Sun. Microsoft offers server operating systems that ship on many hardware systems whose total enterprise sales make Sun look like a small fish. IBM is not aware of enterprise issues for all the Windows servers they sell? Total hubris on the part of Sun. HP not aware? Dell not aware? Sun is only fooling themselves.
Vikas Deolaliker: Solaris x86 is 32-bit and targeted towards the edge server market. Multi-threading type technologies are more appropriate at the core of the enterprise where transactions run. At the edge the only thing that matters is size of the kernel. In addition, SPARC’s MT support helps Solaris’s MT support — x86 processors are not big on accelerating MT yet.
x86 has the only SHIPPING thread acceleration available. The Xeon has shipped MILLIONS of server systems that support hyperthreading (MT). Sun? Sun has shipped ZERO systems that support MT on the chip.
With the recent addition of HT to the Pentium 4 chips, many uniprocessor servers will ship with HT. That’s more MILLIONS of servers in the x86 world that will utilize HT.
Sun has a very poor understanding of the server market if they disregard the millions of servers that the x86 world ships every year.
Regarding graphics cards, I think Linux is better at the desktop and should support all the graphics cards and peripherals. Open source is a very efficient way of developing drivers for peripherals.
If Linux starts getting more and more technical worktation share, where does that leave Sun other than out in the cold depths of outer space? Sun’s pace of innovation on their workstations is glacial at best.
Vikas Deolaliker: The infrastructure to support the enterprise market is complex and expensive. It takes a long lead time to create such an infrastructure. So far, Microsoft has not shown any signs that it is building such an infrastructure. In fact, the only infrastructure moves Microsoft has recently made are targeted towards their business solutions business unit. Microsoft recently re-orged their sales organization by moving the head of sales to run the sales organization for the business solutions group. Yet the company claims that Windows 2003 is targeted at the enterprise.
At least we know where the Iraqi Minister of Information went to. Microsoft has been building enterprise infrastructure for years. “Microsoft? They are just a bunch of goat herders. They are not even a technology company”. Sun denial on the vast inroads Microsoft is making into the enterprise are not going to help Sun.
Vikas Deolaliker: Windows 2003 was originally meant to be released in 2002 but Microsoft (the famous Bill Gates Security Memo) delayed the release saying they would be reviewing the code for security.
Microsoft is at least focusing on security. It is very stupid to think Microsoft won’t get better and better at delivering class-leading security.
After all the reviews, the security functionality is not very impressive. In fact the security in Windows 2003 is achieved simply by limiting the functionality of components that increase security risks.
Microsoft Server 2003 is barely out into the enterprise. Microsoft has started by doing something smart — making the product more secure out of the box. This one step is not offering on Solaris except at extra cost.
For example, now:
– IIS 6.0 is more secure but not as much as Apache (the free Web server)
– Telnet is not installed by default and runs in low-priority
– IE 6.0 is installed by default but with limited functionality
– Finally the secure configuration wizard will not be available on April 24 but a few months later
This seems to be good, right? What’s the issue? That the old versions of Netscape that ship with Solaris are better than IE 6.0? Maybe Sun hasn’t heard but Netscape is not supported by nearly as many websites as IE.
Lately, Microsoft has also launched a marketing campaign to claim thought leadership for security. This campaign was called “Palladium” or Next Generation Platform for Secure Computing. It is still in early vaporware stage; not even the functionality has been decided upon.
But what is Sun doing in this socially reprehensible yet lucrative market? NOTHING. Sun is sitting there throwing spitwads at Microsoft.
The TCPA platform strategy has been going strong in x86 world for a long time now. IBM sells security systems for their PC’s and laptops that are not to be found anywhere in the Sun client world.
Sun has deployed trusted versions of Solaris for years now. In Solaris 9, Sun included certain features of Trusted Solaris into the base Solaris 9.
Funny how the two fastest growing operating systems in trusted environments are Windows and Linux. Windows has been available in various trusted editions for a long time and Linux is being used by many governments, including the US government, that are phasing out Solaris and other proprietary UNIX flavors and Windows in favor of the open security model that Linux offers.
Overall, Sun spouts disinformation, lies, and misdirection. Sun seems to have no concrete operable strategy and falls back on taunts, insults, and denial.
I would not buy stock in a company that demonstrates time and time again that it is run by morons.
Linux on 64-bit machines is no longer “free” nor open source. The 64-bit kernels are not available at http://www.kernel.org they are proprietary to SuSE and Red Hat. Also, SuSE charges around $450/CPU.
The first sign of a (non-monopoly) company going down, is fud spreading. Bye Bye Sun. I don’t think I’ll be seeing you around in five years time.
Whirlpool is an Australian Broadband community website, that best illustrates the (pathetic) state of broadband in Australia.
I guess you are on iprimus dial up.
Anyway check it out, if you are ever looking into broadband.
Everybody else sorry about being off-topic.
Is there something in the air at Sun? This guy HAS no clue. None. Zero. “Unrealistic to expect GUI configuration tools”?? c’mon!
Regarding the comment earlier about purchasing 64bit Linux once and being able to make as many copies as you like within an organisation…. I belive Solaris for Sparc has always been free until you get to the 4-way (and up) servers.
🙂
I’d take an old E-450 over any Compaq/HP Proliant any day 😉
The thing is I believe SUN really have no clue why they are loosing marketshare. The have had a really loyal customerbase that in the past wouldn’t even think twice about what brand of server they were gonna buy. Now Intel and AMD are not that stupid that they didn’t understand why SUN was a success and therefor when they targeted the server market they of course needed to address those issues and add another important factor; price, into the equation. Intel and AMD (with the Opteron) have made significant improvments as far a infrastructure and stability counts and that is why the x86 servermarket a success and why Opteron will slaughter SUNs low-end servers (unless AMD would get a big design win and SUN adopts Opteron) and big Itanium servers will stomp SUN on the highend-side.
SUN really have to put the different pieces together and realise that is is not birds that are whistling and the SUN (pun intended) that is shining but a speeding train approaching at high speed. I’d be sad to see them go but it will be SUNs own fault. At the moment SUN is all bark no bite. They just don’t have any credibility left.
VMS is the thing you want to run if you want real reliability and I also choose HP-UX or AIX way before I choose Solaris. Solaris is good, but HP-UX and AIX is in my opinion much better.
Why? How did you draw this conclusion?
What about .gnu??? If your interested in .gnu contact minddog in #unixhelp or #openirc on the openirc network.
irc.openirc.us
I’m glad the Opteron has come out because now there’s a 64 bit platform that Linux will/does support really well. We have a bunch of Sun servers (mostly 4-way boxes with 4Gig RAM) that serve a bunch of Sun Ray terminals (like around 300)… I always wondered if a Linux system could replace this setup, now I think it can. I believe that a couple of 4 way opteron boxes running Linux could be a great thin client setup for a university (assuming some thin clients as good as/better than the Sun Rays could be found).
However I’m not sure about reliability. You’d want the vendor to have thoroughly tested both the hardware and OS and you’d want guaruntees of updates and support for many many years. The 3 year support that Red Hat have on their high end server versions just wouldn’t be enough.
He’s all about touting Sun’s complete system, claiming that it’s better than sliced bread. Well, I don’t think so. Here’s the breakdown:
1. Currently 0, but with software that is slated for release by Intel for Windows and Linux (which translates 32-bit to 64-bit), 100%. Compaq/HP have had Itanium servers available for a while now (check their site).
2. If a GUI is the least intensive, why are the tools not available? N1 eh, sounds like a complicated mosix cluster if you ask me.
3. Open source is a poor way to develop drivers. It would be alot easier for manufacturers to develop drivers for each system, but then they would need driver developers for each system. Not possible. Sun is blaming their hardware support (or lack of) on their non-openness, rather than their limited market share. Oops.
I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to continue to poke holes in his ‘arguments’.
I find it a pity that somebody of strategic marketing can tell such bsht. But then again he is from marketing! … he only reads aloud chewed bits… he just has misread this one…
in effect this is not what SUN is saying … just some corporate non geek that thinks he knows it all, but never left his ivory SPARC tower.
I do like Sun, Solaris and SPARC technology, and i also like linux, they can benefit from each other in more ways than one…
Latest from Gartner shows Sun taking a big hit in server shipments, with IBM, HP, and Dell taking away share from Sun.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9190
Sun has needed a management purge for a long time. Stop promoting people based on politics instead of merit.
What was Sun’s the purpose of saying, through its spokesman on a public interview, such a load of tripe on linux’s 64bit variation?
Was it on purpose (maybe no one would stand out and the very convenient message would pass)?
… or was it consequence of a spokesman that does not have a clue of what he is saying?
Either way this should be good enough to remove the whole – not just some – (incredibly lame) article.
/* AXP */