Death of Solaris and SPARC

It has been widely reported this past week that Oracle has effectively killed both Solaris and SPARC by RIF'ing almost all of both teams.


I have lots of great memories on both Solaris and SPARC, that I will share in a future post.  My reaction on different forums has been, "it was a self-fulfilling prophesy by Oracle and I am surprised it took them this long."

Another couple of examples of great Sun Microsystems technology that will simply be entries in Wikipedia....

More Details Sun(SM) Software Genius University

Sun ^SM Software Genius University (Sun SGU) is comprised of three majors:

• Identity Management
• Java CAPS
• Solaris

Sun SGU is designed for two categories of individuals designed for Sun and Sun's Partners:

• Systems Engineers
• Professional Services Consultants
  

Sun SGU curriculum is based on the university taxonomy where upon completion of a year the individual can:

• A Freshman (Step-1) can give a quality technical presentation.
• A Sophomore (Step-2) can give a technical demonstration.
  
• A Junior (Step-3) can give a customized technical demonstration.
• A Senior (Step-4) can lead a Proof Of Concept (POC).
• A Master can lead a customer deployment.
  

Each Major (undergrad) represents 280 hours of work in a mixture of disciplines with a strong emphasis on hands-on learning.

Sun employees can access Sun SGU.

Partners will have access to Sun SGU in the August timeframe.

Sun ^SM Software Genius University

Learn Once, Work Anywhere

Solaris TX Could Have Saved San Francisco

The story that came out of San Francisco on August 12th, 2008 should be extremely frightening for all IT Managers. The Washington Post, has a great article on this written by Ashley Surdin.

Ashley brings out, "San Francisco is being forced to overhaul security measures on the computer network that controls data for its police, courts, jails, payroll and health services, as well as other crucial information, after the technology administrator entrusted with the system blocked access for everyone but himself last month and for days refused to reveal the password, even from jail. "

There is a misconception that Solaris with Trusted Extensions is only for the three letter government agencies and it is simply not true. A very important aspect is how Solaris Trusted Extensions - Labeled Security for Absolute Protection - simply extends Solaris security. The paragraph below is brought out on the Solaris TX page and is key for everyone to understand:

"It utilizes User and Process Rights Management, Solaris Containers, file systems, and networking and doesn't require a new or separate kernel. Best of all, it doesn't require ISVs to requalify their applications to run them with sensitivity labels. And because it's an extension to the Solaris 10 OS's security policy, Solaris Trusted Extensions technology is flexible and quick to deploy: You can add new applications, new users, and more, very quickly, without extensive analysis of each application — and without the need to write complex, error-prone security policies that require a system reboot."

Solaris has been and will continue to be a leader in being the most open and secure operating system on planet earth.