On Tue, 22 May 2007, Ian Murdock wrote:
On 5/21/07, Alan DuBoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
People are changing, and newcomers are more willing to use
opensolaris/sx/nevada as it is, but this doesn't say anything
for the large institutions, corporate 500s, and/or government
affiliates that use Solaris as it's been known.
These are the customers I see continuing to use Sun's Solaris.
Absolutely. Indiana is entirely additive. There's still a Solaris in
the new world, and it looks a lot like Solaris does today, is targeted
at the same markets Solaris is targeted at today, etc. Now, I'm pretty
strongly of the opinion that we want one Solaris in the long run--i.e.,
we don't want to bifurcate into a Solaris for the top-down enterprise
and an OpenSolaris for the bottom-up deployers, community, developers,
etc. So, if it's successful, Indiana will ultimately impact the Solaris
roadmap as well. But for the foreseeable future, there's always
Solaris 10 for those folks who want to ignore what we're doing entirely.
We're on the same page here, AFAICT.
I see customers that must have support, or need assistance when
they have problems (i.e., the world doesn't all know Linux
in all cases either), to pony up and purchase RHES.
Ok, but how does the (not so) hypothetical startup I talked about
in the other message get from Ubuntu to RHEL so they can pony up?
My experience has been that many shops will create a solution, then
realize that the solution is in place for their business, and scramble to
figure out how to make sure it's supported.
As an example, let's say an engineer throws up a database server and
starts using it in a company, uses his machine to host the server on, and
writes an application which the company depends on.
Several months go by, and the power goes out. The CEO and CIO are
wondering why there was no UPS on the machine. What do you mean we have a
database server that wasn't on an UPS and hosts the data for our company.
"Get that server and put it in the lab. We need to ensure that it has
power protection in case the power goes out again. We need to make sure we
have backline support for this, etc...".
This is a real world situation, and I did just that at VA Linux Systems
when I was consulting for them. In VA's case, they had the expertise that
they didn't need backend support. But I use this as an example.
Here's another one, from the real world. Company X wants to run their
Oracle database on RHES, and you might ask why? Company X knows that in
order to have Oracle support they must be running on RHES. Company X is
even p!$$!ng in their pants thinking they got a great deal on RHES,
because they bought it for $1500 instead of the normal $2000. Oracle is
also much more difficult to setup on Linux (or was, not sure about now),
so they have DBAs who set it up, and it still takes them more than a day
to get the server working...In the meantime another consultant writes
software to talk to the Oracle database. The consultant knows why they
used RHES, like many of the other lemmings, but he does his work on Debian
because that's the Linux he prefers. Also another real world, and yes, I
know that consultant also.<wink>
Here's one that could be real world, but wasn't. Company X finds out that
they can get a 10% increase in their application by compiling with the
Intel compiler on Linux. Unfortunately, the Intel compiler is packaged in
RPMs and alien doesn't work correctly. Although the Intel compiler costs
about $1000 and RHES costs $2000, they're willing to invest that as
they'll have backend support (so they feel), and getting a 10% increase in
their app is worth the investment. This could be real world, but I just
know that the situation existed previously and required RHES or some
varient to install correctly, when I reviewed the Intel compiler before
coming to Sun, I installed on RH Linux, and tar'd up the directory and
moved it to Debian, which it worked fine as far as I could tell.
BTW, it is my guess that the majority companies that buy RHES don't use
the support, it just gives them the comfort to know that they have it
and/or are running on a supported platform.<wink> Services and Support are
a win-win in that sense for the company that offers it.
These same scenarios work for Solaris/OpenSolaris. Company X knows they
need Solaris to get support from Oracle...same story as above...Sun hasn't
been very good at promoting services and support very well, but that's
gonna be a big future if they want to win their game.
--
Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 IHV/OEM Group
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
