Posted on 19-9-2002
Sun
Shines On Linux
By John Markoff, NYT
San Francisco, Sept. 17 — Sun Microsystems plans to throw its
weight behind
the "open source" software movement on Wednesday as part of
an industry
effort to offer an alternative to Microsoft's Windows and Office
programs.
Sun's challenge, based on the Linux alternative to Windows-based
software,
is a daunting one, according to industry analysts, because Microsoft's
Office suite of word-processing, spreadsheet and other software
applications is pervasive in the corporate computing world.
Yet Sun
executives said they believed that Microsoft was vulnerable
in
cost-sensitive markets like large corporate call centers, which
provide
things like customer service; retail banking organizations;
and government
and educational institutions. "The industry is ready," said
Jonathan
Schwartz, executive vice president for software at Sun. "There
is a great
opportunity for a major systems company to commercialize a full
Linux
desktop." Sun plans to promote the Linux operating system along
with Sun's
own line of StarOffice applications programs. Mr. Schwartz said
Microsoft
was also at risk because many organizations were frustrated
with computer
security issues that continued to plague the company's software.
Sun, which plans to announce the new strategy at a conference
for its
customers on Wednesday, said it would begin shipping the new
products in
the next nine months. Although the Linux operating system for
file-sharing
server computers has proved a viable alternative to Microsoft
and other
vendors in the price-conscious part of corporate computing,
Linux has not
yet made significant inroads among nontechnical personal computer
users.
But a number of executives who are involved with open-source
software said
that Linux was beginning to catch on among the nontechnical
users. One
reason for that, they said, was that Microsoft had changed its
pricing for
corporate and government organizations in recent months to a
subscription
model, which many customers say has effectively raised the cost
of the
company's software. "When Microsoft changed their pricing policy
for
enterprise customers," said David Patrick, the president and
chief
executive of Ximian, a partner of Sun, "it sent a strong message.
And since
then our activity has increased exponentially." Ximian publishes
open-source software, including Gnome desktop applications and
Ximian
Evolution, a competitor to Microsoft Outlook.
For Sun, a computer maker and software company that has been
struggling
along with the dot-com and telecommunications industries, offering
an
inexpensive alternative to Microsoft's products is an effort
to find new
customers. Mr. Schwartz argues that besides having lower licensing
fees
than Microsoft, the open-source alternative based around Linux
and Sun's
own StarOffice program will also offer other indirect cost savings.
"We can
support 2,000 users with one system administrator at Sun," he
said. "It
requires in the neighborhood of one administrator for every
50 users in the
Windows world." But he said Sun had no immediate plans to try
to compete
with Microsoft for the heart of its user base: white-collar
workers and
managers.
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