Sun Microsystems to Increase Its Link to Linux
Battered by the collapse of its free-spending dot-com and telecommunications customers, Sun Microsystems Inc. said Tuesday it would do more to link itself to the free operating system Linux.
A year and a half after buying a manufacturer of inexpensive servers running Linux, Sun said it would start selling a line of low-end servers that would give users a choice of Linux and Sun’s Solaris operating system and that use Intel Corp. microprocessors instead of Sun’s more sophisticated chips.
Since IBM Corp. and Dell Computer Corp. have been selling servers with Intel and Linux for more than a year, analysts said the move was seen as a defensive one. IBM has reaped big gains in hardware sales and consulting by pushing Linux use on its entire range of computers. Linux servers commonly run big e-mail or other applications instead of PC networks.
Sun has stood alone in selling a bundle of its own software, machines and chips. But with $628 million in losses in its last fiscal year and a stock price just off a five-year low, Sun is looking for new markets.
“The company is discounting aggressively to counter increased competition” from IBM on big machines and from Dell and others offering smaller Intel-based computers, said Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Steven Milunovich. Merrill, which has an investment banking relationship with Sun, rates its stock a long-term “buy.”
Sun shares fell 19 cents to $3.93 on Nasdaq.
In a keynote speech Tuesday at the LinuxWorld convention here, Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy admitted waiting too long to embrace Linux, which is popular for firms cutting costs. “We’ve kind of goofed. We walked away from a market space,” McNealy said.
McNealy said Sun’s technical support can help Linux acceptance “if we bring open-source to places people are afraid of it.” Like the Java programming language controlled by Sun, Linux is controlled by its inventor but relies on the contributions of others through the collaborative open-source process.
Sun and Linux have something else besides their open-source histories in common: their shared conviction that Microsoft Corp. is the enemy. “You are doing things that the attorney general hasn’t been able to,” McNealy said.
For that reason, Linux specialists were paying close attention to Sun’s hints that it soon will do much more in the space where Linux is weakest: the desktop PCs that almost universally run Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Open-source attempts to give average computer users a viable alternative are progressing slowly, and large companies are heavily invested in Windows systems.
As part of its settlement with the Justice Department, Microsoft must reveal more of how its PC systems work and how they tie in to its server software. Theoretically, that should weaken the connection, allowing Linux and others to control more functions on Windows PCs while giving Linux PCs a better chance in more offices.
Microsoft hasn’t revealed how the interaction data would be released under new licensing agreements, and critics believe that Microsoft will withhold key information or restrict its use.
Many Linux enthusiasts are hoping that Sun will bring more of its deep pockets and engineering talents to the desktop war, where it already has contributed a free alternative to Microsoft applications for word processing and spreadsheet calculations.
The adoption of desktop operating systems “depends so much on marketing and macro-level industry things,” said Jed Unterecker, a Linux developer with Penguin Computing in San Francisco. Sun promised news about non-Microsoft desktops in mid-September.
“The Linux desktop environment grew last year,” said Sun software chief Jonathan Schwartz. “It seems like it might be time to bring it all together.”
