Solaris tightens Merced screws on Microsoft

1999-09-02

In our recent story about the Intel 64-bit architecture, we neglected to mention one operating system vendor who has, until recently, politely avoided showing its true colours. Highly unusual behaviour for SUN who has now announced a Win-beating timetable for its flagship operating system, Solaris.

SUN’s plans are for a release of Solaris for the IA-64 simulator “some time this autumn” – this is based on the assumption that most development will be carried out on the simulator for the immediate future. As we discussed, it is highly unlikely that Microsoft will have much to show before the middle of next year.

Microsoft have had a lot of wind in their sales [sic] in the past, which has caused end users to wait for Microsoft releases rather than use available products from other vendors. This was true of applications software, when users had already invested in Microsoft operating systems. It seems most unlikely that the same will hold true for operating system software. The other differentiator was price. Inevitably, OS pricing will be driven down, both by the commodity nature of the IA-64 OS market and by the fact that at least one, namely Linux, will be available for free. Application availability was never really an issue on the server.

It appears that the biggest software company in the world may, already, have missed the boat.

(First published 2 September 1999)