Sun users shiver as they wait for Oracle

Beverley Head
Monday, 01 February 2010 15:30

IT Industry - Market

Australian enterprises which are heavy users of Sun Microsystems hardware will be 'shivering in their boots' until Oracle makes clear its roadmap for the future and sets out what products it will continue to support and what will become legacy.

While Sun and Oracle users have had nine months to get used to the idea of the merger of the two industry heavyweights, the deal only got the regulatory nod late last month.

According to Ovum research director Dr Steve Hodgkinson there is likely to be some angst among Sun users as to how the merger will play out. 'Users of the SPARC platform will be most concerned,' he said. While Oracle last year suggested it would continue to run both Sun's Intel based and SPARC based hardware programmes, it has not said for how long the two can exist in tandem.

For some big local Sun users, such as the Bureau of Meteorology and the ANU, which last March announced a $30 million four year deal to install 2,500 Sun blade servers as part of a high performance computing grid, a little more clarity would be extremely welcome.

Dr Ben Evans, head of the ANU supercomputing facility, said that; 'We are keen that whatever the name of the new company it picks up the leadership of Sun in the HPC (High Performance Computing) scientific computing area.'

To some extent the university is cushioned from any big swings in direction as the Sun servers it uses run on Intel chips and Linux, 'But we are using some semi proprietary parts from Sun,' Evans said.

Although Sun Microsystems is keeping its major clients informed of developments as best it can, 'It's wait and see what they do,' according to Evans. And other local Sun users such as the four big banks, many universities and Telstra are also having to wait and see.