About a week ago I published a post, Four Socket + Quad-Core + 2U = Power!, about Sun Microsystems (NasdaqGS: JAVA) introducing a new server based on Intel's Xeon 7300 processor, which seemed quite a departure from the company whose core business in their SPARC processor-based servers, but now it appears that they are embracing Microsoft's Windows Server operating system, by becoming an OEM.
I'm sure Microsoft is quite happy about this considering that the Windows server and Solaris operating systems have long been rivals in the enterprise computing arena. I suppose it only makes sense though since Sun has released several x86 (AMD and Intel) servers and they are looking for wider adoption of their Solaris for x86 operating system. I'm sure there are fiercely loyal traditionalists (SPARC/Solaris) who are scratching their heads and wondering if Hell has indeed frozen over.
The full press release can be found on Sun Microsystems' site here. What do you think? Is this a good thing for Sun or more importantly is this a good thing for customers? I don't think this signals the end for SPARC/Solaris environments as even in a mixed environment this platform was considered the workhorse for financial systems, database or anything that was truly processor-intensive.
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