Honestly, (and I'm not speaking in any way as an Oracle insider, or
from any inside knowledge), the question is not "Will Solaris Survive?",
the real question is "Will Solaris continue to be a General Purpose
Computing OS/platform?"
Oracle (pre-Sun) was massively invested in Solaris as their primary
development OS for the DB products (that is, Oracle did development on
Solaris, then ported the fixes to other platforms). I don't think
that's changed. Now that they own Solaris, I can't imaging that
anything but improving the Oracle DB/Solaris coupling is on their minds.
Solaris also provides some real nice Enterprise Storage possibilities,
plus some other vertical integration opportunities.
The question here is if Oracle is willing (or interested) in keeping the
ISV market for Solaris alive and well. That's what will keep Solaris
going as a General Purpose OS (i.e. one where I buy some hardware, put
Solaris on it, then run random things). Otherwise, it's going to move
into a "bundle" concept, where you buy a thing (appliance,
pre-configured software, etc.) to perform a specific task, and, oh, by
the way, the underlying OS is Solaris. Virtualization, Storage,
DataBase, Java Containers are all areas where Oracle is bundling Solaris
with an app to sell a solution.
The Bundle concept can be massively profitable, and maintain a
significant competitive advantage over build-it-yourself solutions.
However, without specifically courting and maintaining ISV
relationships, Solaris will not be able to avoid complete
marginalization and not-so-far-away death as a general-purpose platform.
It's a matter of where Oracle wants to make money, and if they value the
extra revenue that being a GP-OS brings, vs the effort it requires to
maintain this presence.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
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