We have relaunched: What's new at ZDNet Asia?

HP to sell ProLiant servers with Sun's Solaris

Summary

The manufacturer will bundle Solaris 10, a rival to its own HP-UX operating system, with its ProLiant servers and blade systems.

Events

Microsoft MSDN/Developer Event
25 Mar 2010

One Marina Boulevard, Microsoft Singapore

IT Architect Regional Conference Singapore 2010
20 - 21 Apr 2010

Singapore Management University, Singapore

The Internet Show 2010
21-22 Apr 2010

Suntec Singapore

HP is to bundle the Solaris 10 operating system with its ProLiant servers and blade systems.

The multi-year deal, announced on Wednesday, marks the first time the hardware manufacturer has explicitly endorsed Sun's operating systems--a rival to its own HP-UX Unix implementation. The terms of the new agreement, which does not extend to HP's Integrity servers, make Sun a "strategic HP ProLiant OS distribution partner", according to a statement from the companies.

HP will also increase its participation in the OpenSolaris community, working on feature development and interoperability.

John Fowler, Sun's executive vice president for systems, said in the statement that HP's endorsement "dramatically expands the available market for Solaris on x86 servers, building on the largest installed-base of any commercial Unix and Linux distribution".

The deal means Solaris is now a "peer" to Microsoft Windows among HP's channels and partners, Sun's president and chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, wrote on his blog on Wednesday. He added that the deal was all about increasing the market for Solaris.

"Today, we're announcing the single biggest and most important OEM/distribution agreement Sun's ever signed for the open-source Solaris operating system--through which we'll be joining forces with the world's largest supplier of high-volume servers, Hewlett-Packard," Schwartz wrote.

The announcement comes a day after market research firm IDC released figures for worldwide server revenue. According to IDC, Sun's servers saw a 14.1 percent fall in revenue in the quarter, year-on-year, and a 8.4 percent decline for the whole of 2008. That compares with a drop of 14 percent and 3.3 percent respectively for the server industry as a whole.

Sun held onto fourth place in the server-hardware market, after IBM, HP and Dell. The new partnership allies Sun's Solaris operating system with machines from the three manufacturers ahead of it in server-hardware sales.

"This relationship brings every major server vendor to the Solaris OEM marketplace, with HP capping a great list of Solaris endorsers that includes Intel, AMD, IBM, Dell and many others," Schwartz wrote. "At this stage, we count more than a 1,000 x86 systems supported by Solaris and OpenSolaris, and nearly 8,000 [independent software vendor] applications."

This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.

Talkback

Add your opinion

In order to post a comment, you need to be registered. (Sign In or register below)

Post your comment
Transform your business interactions with real-time voice, video and telepresence solutions.
Tech Vendor: Cisco

ZDNet Asia Live

When I create an event, I click on an approximate time during the day when I want the event to occur, then I click "edit event detail...

4 hours 8 minutes ago by bessellbrowne on Google Calendar gets 'smart' rescheduling

ipads break alott i had one it broke three times in the month i had it so i got rid of the damn thing id just go for the laptop Top Grade...

4 hours 9 minutes ago by bessellbrowne on Report: 'Hundreds of thousands' of iPad preorders

There are a number of websites that still require Internet Explorer to view and IE for Mac Stinks (it is really ies4osx which is the Wind...

4 hours 11 minutes ago by bessellbrowne on Microsoft: Only minor tweaks in Windows 7 SP1

The receivers don't transmit back to the satellite. Unless there is a phone line attached to the receiver, they don't have any wa...

4 hours 14 minutes ago by bessellbrowne on Apple to join the geolocation craze?

What to expect from open source Symbian http://is.gd/aPIGL

4 hours 29 minutes ago by rebelk0de on topsy

"Lead Cognos BI Developer Insurance in New South Wales , Australian ..." http://bit.ly/ayy19L

5 hours 9 minutes ago by rhrcognos on topsy

whatever little understanding I have we 'll only progress toward end of the world if we use HPCs to lenthen life of human being. Huma...

14 hours 20 minutes ago by abhi32002@gmail.com on High computing promises elixir of life

Thanks for the knowledgeable article on SDDs. Allas...when all this reasearch will happen in Indian Universities. Hope the new bill on Fo...

14 hours 33 minutes ago by abhi32002@gmail.com on APAC HPC users eye solid-state drives

It was a good article. This brings a good opportunity for Indian IT firms to come up with new solutions in this field. HPC can become a b...

14 hours 52 minutes ago by abhi32002@gmail.com on High computing most-wanted job in Asia

COL KR DHARMADHIKARY(RETD) its very late to reply the link, but if it is still alive and looking for opportunity, i would like to know th...

18 hours 49 minutes ago by deb021280 on Education takes off in rural India, helped by PCs

It was just a matter of time until google was marginalised anyway. I'm afraid this will be forgotten in China very quickly. Still, it...

20 hours 54 minutes ago by robinsmith on Report: Google to leave China on April 10

High performance computing (HPC) most-wanted job in Asia http://bit.ly/9vFC3i (via @zdnetasia) #singapore

He doesn't care if her shoes are of glass, All he wants to see is a huge rack and nice a*s. Sleeping beauty's not awoken by true ...

21 hours 23 minutes ago by warlowdavies on One pair of 3D glasses to rule them all

RT @zdnetasia: EMC COO, Pat Gelsinger, on bridging gaps in the organization and its cloud ambitions in Asia. (cont) http://tl.gd/i5jjd

EMC COO, Pat Gelsinger, on bridging gaps in the organization and its cloud ambitions in Asia. http://bit.ly/9etOZW

Asian SMBs need to pay more attention to disaster recovery planning http://bit.ly/bDet08 via @zdnetasia

Asian SMBs need to pay more attention to disaster recovery planning http://bit.ly/bDet08

[TECH] URL Shorteners slow Web redirection. - http://bit.ly/bySnWK @zdnetasia

URL shorteners are great but they can slow web redirection & you pray it would never go down http://bit.ly/bySnWK via @zdnetasia

Temasek Holdings eyeing tech stocks, indicating optimistic outlook on IT sector. http://bit.ly/aM7VwU

URL shorteners slow Web redirection. http://bit.ly/bySnWK

Chinese agencies cry foul over Google. http://bit.ly/by6rwV

Philippine antipiracy drive focuses on enterprises. http://bit.ly/aWryDC

Gartner: China to become world's fastest-growing enterprise software market. http://bit.ly/bqJTtb

all of sg's isps have been practising compulsory invisible proxy for all home subscribers at their backend since many years back alre...

2 days 33 minutes ago by melvinchia on Web filters mean bad news for business

it is not to good for china.
Proactol

2 days 18 minutes ago by nathonastle on Chinese ad partners beg Google for information

RT @zdnetasia: HP touts new products and management and productivity tools to address business computing pain points. http://bit.ly/dudgA6

For those with a computer science background, or interested in the high performance computing scene: http://bit.ly/9vFC3i

HP touts new products and management and productivity tools to address business computing pain points. http://bit.ly/dudgA6

IT security insiders rob casinos of $50K http://is.gd/aPIKR

2 days 49 minutes ago by rebelk0de on topsy

Very good explanation of JMX

3 days 23 minutes ago by Babith B on Managing applications with JMX

The reaction to a report issued Tuesday by Flurry Analytics managed to completely overlook some interesting news--the Android-based Motorola Droid outsold the original iPhone over the same period of time following their respective launches--to focus instead on the sales numbers for the Nexus One.

3 days 26 minutes ago by lonemavericks on diggs

Another ZTE story....

3 days 28 minutes ago by Moderate Your Greed on Philippines opens bid for final 3G license

We at www.fifosys.com have also seen a growth in IT outsourcing and anticipate it as a growing field.

3 days 2 minutes ago by sarah Jane on Companies' outsourcing spend to increase