Sun Microsystems has launched its much anticipated Solaris 10, declaring the OS now free to download for commercial use, along with an aggressive services and support plan clearly devised to undercut Linux archrival Red Hat's pricing.
With Oracle's annual OpenWorld conference on the horizon, database vendors are preparing for battle once again. This time around, the big three -- IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft -- are brandishing XML (Extensible Markup Language) as the not-so secret weapon for making their databases faster and using it to anchor Web services.
Although the approaches vary, industry observers now claim investments by Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard will create an infrastructure to integrate outsourced and in-house applications. If their efforts succeed, these companies have a shot at convincing large corporate users to adopt the software-as-service model.
Sun Microsystems and IBM last week called a truce to their high-profile licensing dispute over the latest enterprise Java specification, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), but continuing calls for standardisation and open-source Java initiatives are increasing the pressure on Sun to loosen its grip on the popular development language and platform.
