>From the San Francisco Chronicle: Sun Banking on Open Source
Sun Microsystems Inc. said Wednesday that it will give some of its key software to customers for free, hoping to catapult its popularity with businesses and developers. The Menlo Park company will no longer charge for the Java Enterprise System, along with some other programs, marking a big financial gamble for a company that has struggled financially in recent years. To make money, Sun executives said they are banking on customers paying for support and services for the various programs, which are used for everything from managing business software to e-mail to making data from different sources compatible. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president, said the free offer would expand Sun's reach to as many users as possible, in effect getting the company's foot in the door for future business. He denied that the strategy could eviscerate the company's revenues -- which are heavily reliant on selling servers -- and instead emphasized that big corporations are invariably willing to pay for support and services for software they use in case it needs fixing or upgrades. "We're going to be driving for volume first and foremost, then figuring the right service to monetize that volume," Schwartz said. The decision to give away the Java Enterprise System and the other software follows an earlier move this year by Sun to make its Solaris 10 operating system available for free. Executives called that decision so successful, with 3.4 million registered licenses issued since February, that they wanted to expand upon it. In addition to making various software products free on Wednesday, Sun said it will further embrace the open source model, giving away the source code to software so that developers can customize code, make fixes and create new programs. No dates were disclosed for when the code would be available, however. Sun has no immediate plans to make some of its other software open source, including its Java SE, used to write other programs. The free model has gained a lot of traction in the technology industry with the proliferation of Linux, open source software that is available for free from many companies but often comes with optional paid support and services. Some customers have preferred the open source model, saying that it keeps them from being locked into a single provider, such as Microsoft, whose software code is proprietary. Companies have also said that updates and fixes of open source applications seem to happen faster because of the large community of developers that works on the software. In business software, Sun trails rivals IBM, BEA and Microsoft. Sun's change in strategy is seen as a way to try to bolster its business, which has been historically dependent on selling computer servers. The Java Enterprise System, which costs $140 per user per year, was generating roughly $100 million a year in revenue for a company that had $11.1 billion in revenue fiscal year 2005. Prior to Wednesday's announcement, Sun already offered some of its Java software for free to companies with fewer than 100 employees. As part of Wednesday's announcement, Sun also said it will bundle some of its software into a single package, Solaris Enterprise System, creating an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Sun shares fell 12 cents to close at $3.77 in Nasdaq trading Wednesday. E-mail Verne Kopytoff at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Page C - 1 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/01/BUGTPG0Q401.DTL === Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Interaction is the mind-body problem of computing." --Philip L. Wadler ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
