IBM + Sun: Open-Source Juggernaut?

Struggling Sun Microsystems on Wednesday announced plans to offer cloud-based server and storage services for developers, students and start-ups, launching this summer. The announcement came amid reports of a $6.5 billion offer on the table from IBM, and has sparked heady discussions of what the teaming would mean for open-source computing, cloud or otherwise.

The new Sun Open Cloud Compute service will allow developers to write, test and run applications for Windows, Solaris or Linux using Sun’s VirtualBox virtual machines. Users will be able to access the machines via the Internet, create an account, launch a virtual session and start allocating servers, storage, IP addresses and so on for a complete computing infrastructure.

What sets SOCC apart from cloud services like Amazon’s EC2, Sun said, is the fact that users will be able read and write to files from within a browser window, across the Internet. The initiative also makes use of a protocol known as WebDAV, which allows multiple users to make multiple changes to the same file.

Sun also plans on sharing open source APIs for the cloud offering with the Eucalyptus Project, so its cloud can be combined with Amazon's EC2 cloud for one big happy open framework.

All of which sounds exciting for developers. But will an IBM takeover effectively kill Sun’s nascent cloud effort?

The Unix/Linux Effect

IBM of course has its own extensive cloud computing strategy and resources in place, so it’s not clear how Sun’s open-source cloud offering will fit in. Internal political battles are entirely possible, as xchange editor Kelly Teal pointed out yesterday. If it acquires Sun, Big Blue executives may well choose to simply ingest parts of Sun’s cloudling and fold them into its own.

Still, the pairing has the ability to shake up the landscape. Between the two of them, IBM and Sun control about two-thirds of the Unix market; and Sun’s Solaris operating system leads the market. Combining IBM and Sun would thus create a serious threat to Hewlett-Packard Co., the only other major Unix vendor.

Solaris also would give IBM gear more heft than it has now—its AIX Unix offering is widely considered to be nearing obsolescence at a time when the market is contracting. For 2008, worldwide server revenue fell 3 per cent year-over-year for a total of $53.3 billion, according to the IDC -- the worst performance since the first quarter of 2002. IBM, Sun and HP each showed declines. It’s time for something new.

Finally, Sun’s open-source MySQL and Java, and IBM’s Linux expertise and vast distribution network would dovetail nicely—and would benefit from Solaris integration. Beyond teaming up with Canonical, Sun has brought little additional to the Linux discussion. In fact, its OpenSolaris licensing scheme has kept Linux and Solaris development completely separate from each other. As part of IBM, those walls could come down, giving open source a kind of momentum it hasn’t seen to date.