14 DAY TRIAL // 14 November, Oracle OpenWorld 2007 conference, Michael Dell (Dell CEO and founder) and Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems CEO) announce that Dell will offer rack and blade servers with Sun's Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems. That means anyone who will buy a Dell rack or blade optimized servers will have the possibility to install one of Sun's operating systems, Solaris or OpenSolaris. Not only that, but the customers will also benefit of online support from Sun Microsystems, through Dell! This is really incredible, as Dell and Sun Microsystems have been rivals for more than 12 years in the server business. Well, as you can see, anything can happen these days!
So, what will Dell do? Well, it is a well known fact that Dell already supports the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Novell's SUSE Linux and Microsoft's Windows Server in all its blade and rack servers, and now Dell will optimize, certify and test the OpenSolaris and Solaris operating systems on its severs, and offer them as a choice in the overall Dell software menu. Moreover, the customers will be able to download Sun's OpenSolaris operating system directly from Dell's website.
And now you'll probably ask yourselves: 'What made Dell and Sun sign this agreement?' Rick Becker, Dell Product Group's vice president of solutions gives us three main reasons for this partnership with Sun Microsystems:
1. Sun's new and strong commitment to x86 systems; 2. A lot of people are already using the Solaris operating systems; 3. Our existing customers are asking for this option.
"One of the first customers for this will be the U.S. Navy", Becker said. "They're very high on Solaris, and they have a lot of Dell hardware already, [...] And they want the traditional support package for everything. We'll give them all the support they need through our open source and hardware teams, and Sun will take care of Solaris support from their end. It'll be a collaborative process all the way around."