Thursday, December 15, 2005
Sun May Open SeeBeyond, Provide Google with Servers
I've been privy to two seemingly credible rumors this week, both circumstantially involving Sun Microsystems.
Open SeeBeyond
The first is that Sun may be planning to open-source the code for the recently acquired SeeBeyond middleware/integration product.
On the one hand, this follows the same open source / paid support model that Sun appears to be migrating to, having opened the source to its Solaris operating system via the OpenSolaris project. This would be an unbelievable boon for developers attempting to adapt non-Java components to their J2EE systems - SeeBeyond has an impressive suite of adapters for a wide variety of non-Java and legacy systems (COM, DCOM, mainframe, .NET, CORBA, etc).
At the same time, its adapters are unique in the industry, and one of SeeBeyond's key competitive advantages over systems like WebMethods - it is this fact that gives me some pause in completely putting stock in this rumor.
Google Turns to Sun for Servers
The second rumor is a tad less believable than the first, but potentially amazing if it plays out to be true - Google has apparently approached Sun about migrating their legendary server farm over to Sun hardware.
This poses a ton of questions - would Google conduct a mass migration, or migrate through attrition as servers die off and need to be replaced? Would Google rely on Sun's latest Niagara chipset, or stick to the x86 architecture and use Opterons or some other AMD offering? Obviously, Google wouldn't move their highly customized OS (based on the Linux kernel, w/a custom file system, node communication, etc) to Solaris, making the AMD chipset the more likely candidate. Still, this would be a huge win for Sun, giving much credibility to the abrasive marketing campaigns they've launched against competitors such as Dell (looks like Dell is Sun's new MS, doesn't it?).
As much as I disdain churning in the Rumor Mill, these two pieces of insider information seemed to good to pass on. Only time will tell if either manifests.
Open SeeBeyond
The first is that Sun may be planning to open-source the code for the recently acquired SeeBeyond middleware/integration product.
On the one hand, this follows the same open source / paid support model that Sun appears to be migrating to, having opened the source to its Solaris operating system via the OpenSolaris project. This would be an unbelievable boon for developers attempting to adapt non-Java components to their J2EE systems - SeeBeyond has an impressive suite of adapters for a wide variety of non-Java and legacy systems (COM, DCOM, mainframe, .NET, CORBA, etc).
At the same time, its adapters are unique in the industry, and one of SeeBeyond's key competitive advantages over systems like WebMethods - it is this fact that gives me some pause in completely putting stock in this rumor.
Google Turns to Sun for Servers
The second rumor is a tad less believable than the first, but potentially amazing if it plays out to be true - Google has apparently approached Sun about migrating their legendary server farm over to Sun hardware.
This poses a ton of questions - would Google conduct a mass migration, or migrate through attrition as servers die off and need to be replaced? Would Google rely on Sun's latest Niagara chipset, or stick to the x86 architecture and use Opterons or some other AMD offering? Obviously, Google wouldn't move their highly customized OS (based on the Linux kernel, w/a custom file system, node communication, etc) to Solaris, making the AMD chipset the more likely candidate. Still, this would be a huge win for Sun, giving much credibility to the abrasive marketing campaigns they've launched against competitors such as Dell (looks like Dell is Sun's new MS, doesn't it?).
As much as I disdain churning in the Rumor Mill, these two pieces of insider information seemed to good to pass on. Only time will tell if either manifests.
