With almost 10 years of open source experience under my belt, I have no doubt that open source software is ready for prime time across the enterprise today.

As unlikely as it might've seemed 10 years ago, open source software has become mainstream in today's data centers. A decade ago, in 1996, I was a technical director in the U.S. Department of Defense, where I made the decision to deploy hundreds of open source Linux Web and file servers.

Back then, many engineers were skeptical about the idea of running an open source operating system on Intel-based 486 servers in production — some people even said I was crazy. While today I look more forward-thinking than crazy, the truth is my main motivation at the time was to address our user needs in a more cost-effective and reliable fashion.

Open source software has had quite a run. Not only is it widely accepted and adopted on servers as an operating system, open source projects have made inroads into other markets, including application, Web, and even database servers. And, while some people remain skeptical about open source on the desktop, I have little doubt that open source will someday soon offer a more cost-effective, secure, and functional alternative on the desktop. It already has here at Sun, where we have 36,000 desktops running the open source Sun Java Desktop System.

Open source systems power the backbone of many large commercial enterprises — including Google, eBay, and Yahoo! — as well as almost every branch of government. During the last year and a half, the investment community has come around, as evidenced by the fact that venture capitalists invested over $400 million in more than 50 open source companies during that time. Simply put, there is no longer any doubt about whether open source software is ready to run mission critical business operations.

If You're Running Solaris OS, You're Already Open Source

When it comes to the Solaris OS, many people who have expressed skepticism about open source software may not even realize that they are already running open source in their enterprise. In fact, the Solaris OS is a monumental open source project considering its $180 billion installed base. Simply put, if an enterprise is running the Solaris Operating System, it has adopted open source and open systems. If there is still any question, doubters can check Sun's OSI certification. It's also important to point out that it's not just limited to Solaris OS; most of Sun's Java Enterprise System suite of middleware and database components are either open sourced today, or in the process of being open sourced.

The support for the OpenSolaris OS is obvious both in and out of Sun. There are more than 12,000 servers running OpenSolaris at Sun. In the nine months since Sun made the decision to open source the Solaris OS, more than 11,750 people have registered as community members, and only 1500 of them are from Sun. The community is energetic, with more than 19,000 postings in OpenSolaris discussion groups, and there have been more than 4.3 million registered licenses of the Solaris OS — with many more downloads going unrecorded. In fact, you can join the masses right now and download Solaris OS.

One of the greatest things about going open source is that the community building is self-perpetuating and the ability to leverage existing and new platforms is seemingly endless. Already, commercial ISVs like IBM and Oracle have embraced the OpenSolaris OS. OpenSolaris is binary compatible to previous versions of Solaris OS (within a Intel, AMD, or SPARC chip set) and runs on over 500 non-Sun hardware platforms from companies like HP, Dell, and IBM.

And community members are extending the Solaris OS code in new and unexpected ways — porting DTrace to FreeBSD, PHP, and Ruby, as well as running Mono on Solaris OS. More and more individuals, corporations, and governments are standardizing and contributing to open source. And, as more people join the community, more people benefit.

Analyst Stephen O'Grady Offers His View on Open Source

Recently, I had the honor to speak with analyst Stephen O'Grady from the firm RedMonk about the Solaris Operating System and open source. For those of you not familiar with Stephen, he might be a bigger open source nut than me. Heck, Stephen runs an open source operating system on his laptop. Anyway, Stephen and I were discussing the Solaris Operating System when I asked him how we should position the Solaris OS to old school shops that didn't believe in open source software.

"Open source is all upside for them," Stephen replied. "There is no downside, and no risk. They may get additional features and functionality, as well as improved security — even greater platform support — from the members of the open source community."

When I asked Stephen how Sun might approach customers who had switched from Sun hardware and software to Linux software and x86 hardware for perceived cost savings, his answer was equally illuminating.

"RedMonk will never recommend rip and replace, because Linux is a very capable operating system — and I use it personally," he said. "But Linux and Solaris have different strengths, and with the Solaris OS they don't need to replace their Linux investments. Solaris OS can run on the very same hardware they are using for Linux. A lot of Linux skills are relevant for a Solaris operating environment.

"RedMonk would encourage companies to take a look at their business objective and map those to specific functionalities," Stephen said. "For example, Sun can differentiate its product with DTrace, ZFS, and [Solaris] Containers. Businesses should at least evaluate Solaris because it doesn't cost anything to do so."

The Solaris Operating System does indeed have a lot to recommend it. Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) offers an impressive diagnostic tool that makes it possible to troubleshoot problems in real time. Solaris Containers offers the most efficient way to virtualize an operating system — vastly improving resource utilization and reducing downtime. And the soon to be released Solaris ZFS will deliver groundbreaking file system capabilities by automating common administrative tasks, protecting data from corruption, and allowing virtually unlimited scalability.

Even with all these great features, the thing I like most as a CIO is that the Solaris Operating System is free RTU and runs on the x86/x64 hardware you already own. Also, Solaris 10 support costs are on average 40% less than Red Hat support costs on volume servers.¹ So, if you purchase a Dell box with 2 CPU's with Solaris OS and standard support from Sun, you'd be paying US$480. Standard support from Red Hat on the same machine running Linux, would cost you US$1499.

Both Stephen and I were at the Sun Analyst Summit recently where Marc Andreessen — who many of you know as the person who created Mosaic, which became the first commercial Web browser — described why he selected the Solaris OS running on Sun x64 AMD Opteron processor-based servers as the platform for his new social Web applications company, Ning. Marc demonstrated how price, performance, and total cost of ownership all helped make the Solaris OS on x64 the most cost-effective server architecture. I asked Stephen his reaction, expecting him to be surprised by Marc's claims. But it was me who was startled by how evident this was to Stephen.

"Beginning about 18 to 24 months ago, Sun's beta customers starting claiming some great results, especially around DTrace and networking," he said. "In many cases this is the result of functionality not available elsewhere. Marc's numbers might have surprised me more a couple of years ago, but today the numbers just validate that Solaris has real benefits."

As our conversation was wrapping up, we began speculating about when open source might arrive on the desktop. It occurred to me that open source had arrived on the desktop in many instances. So, I asked Stephen if he were operating a transactional environment like, say, a call center, would he use Microsoft Windows on the desktop.

"It's an option," he replied. "But if I were deploying simple browser-based terminals for email and browsing and such, I might well not use Windows. Why pay for functionality that's not being used? In thin or limited client scenarios, open source clients can be a very attractive option."

Ten Years Later, It's an Open Source World

As my conversation with Stephen illustrates, and as is borne out by a decade's worth of experience, I have learned a number of things about open source that no one would have believed 10 years ago. It turns out that open source software is more secure than closed software because there is no such thing as security through obscurity. Open source software costs less than proprietary software because the acquisition costs are lower and the support costs are lower in development and test environments. Open source is more than capable of running very large mission-critical systems. And, perhaps most importantly, open source systems outperform closed systems given the right application and configuration.

In other words, open source isn't ready for prime time — it is prime time.

» Download Solaris 10 now

Bill Vass
Chief Information Officer
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
cio@sun.com

¹ List price comparison for Solaris Service Plans vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server plans for systems with 1-4 processors.