Linux Replaces Sun At Weather.com

cwebster writes "Linux running on IBM Netfinity servers will be replacing Sun Enterprise 450 servers at weather.com. Sun will still have a place though, running IBM's websphere application as a back-end on Sun E4500 servers. You can read about it here at CNet." This is actually more than it sounds like, and gives a little glimpse into what IBM is thinking.

Comments

Why not linux on the E450's?

[fishbowl]

I would much rather have heard about Linux
replacing Solaris on the E450's, than about the
hardware changing from Sun to IBM.

I like this guy.

[ajdavis]

Wladawsky-Berger seemed to be a very smart, non-marketeering, down-in-the-trenches kind of guy. He spoke with enough easy jargon that C|Net, even in a technical article, had to insert parentheticals explaining what he said. He mentioned SGI (a direct competitor) in an extremely positive way, and didn't take the opportunity to bash Sun. If IBM has people like this working at its highest level ("vice president of technology and strategy"), I have great hopes for their continuing wonderfulness.

How in the world did IBM, famous for its entrenched monopolist corporate culture, manage to turn itself around so quickly and fundamentally?

Re:I like this guy.

[_Swank]

How in the world did IBM, famous for its entrenched monopolist corporate culture, manage to turn itself around so quickly and fundamentally?

In 1993 Lou Gerstner took over as CEO of IBM. He had no experience in the technology industry (he came from RJR Nabisco), but he did have a solid vision for IBM and really saw IBM's strengths and weaknesses and how to leverage them. He transformed the overly formal and stuffy internal culture and policies (the "blue suits" stereotype), helped revamp the public's perception of Big Blue(a new and different ad campaign, more customer centric, more open), and set strong goals for IBM's future.

The details can be read in the book IBM Redux by Doug Garr, a former IBM executive. It's a pretty well-written book about where IBM was (almost dead) and how they got to where they are today.

Sun vs. Linux.

[Ozone Pilot]

Placing Linux on front ends (read: webservers) is a no brainer because you can slap together a few PIII's, put 'em behind a local director and be done with it, and you can do it for the cost of ONE Sun Enterprise 450.

Linux has a formidable barrier to overcome, though, before it's a realistic alternative to Sun in back-end architecture. The volume management isn't there, the shared memory performance isn't there and the heavy artillery hardware support (big fargon disk arrays, etc.) isn't there.

Of course I like to see that Linux is gaining market but these peices walk a fine line between truth and FUD for those who aren't determined to read the fine print. Sun actually understands the Linux market and is opening. Solaris media for $10 shipped? I don't see Microsoft doing that. A better story here would be a discussion on the technology gap between Linux and Sun/Solaris and how it is gradually closing. It's not a Sun vs. Linux story.

Linux replaces the sun?

[levendis]

Okay, I agree Linux is great and all, but replacing the Sun?? Isn't that a bit ambitious?

Re:Linux replaces the sun?

[Money__]

Re: "Great. It really sucked when the Sun was running NT. Those BSODs really ruined my day."

So that's why the sky is blue.
___

Win2k replaces Linux at /.

[Money__]

CmdrTaco on 1:47 AM -- Tuesday June 4 2000
from the say it isn't so dept.
CmdrTaco writes I've decided to change over to a Microsoft solution and deploy Win2k on all the web servers here. This is a very large investment, but I believe that this will lead to better security, better speed, and a better user experience for /.ers. In a related story, hell froze over and monkeys actually flew from RMSs ass.
___

Re:Sun is really in trouble

[softsign]

Given that you work for Microsoft, I can understand why you'd be spouting the dot-truth that so thoroughly disgusted anyone with even a simple understanding of the facts.

But anyways, having worked with all the OSes mentioned above, I can tell you why Sun is still great. Their server solutions work. And work _great_. You don't have to be a magician to make Solaris run well on Sun hardware. And if you ever do mess anything up, you call up Sun's tech support and they help you fix it. Contrast with Microsoft $9/min tech support - "Oh no, you don't have to call back, I'll wait while you reinstall Office". Or with Linux support, which until recently has consisted mostly of IRC, Usenet and FAQs (this is great for the hobbyist and someone with time on his hands, but for the sysadmin whose mission-critical database just went down, it's not quite a sure thing that you'll get your system up in no time). Availability. Guaranteed availability.

Of course, there's a price to be paid for the kind of solutions and service Sun provides. Their high-end stuff is priced accordingly. Why? Well, because there are obviously enough people in the world willing to pay for it. It's the beauty of the market economy. For the same reasons that Windows hasn't yet died a long-overdue death (and somehow controls the home OS market), Sun continues to sell mission-critical hardware for a premium: people think it's worth it .

Besides, you can hardly say that the Linux/Netfinity solution here is cheap. $1 million. And I'm pretty sure that's not all hardware.

I guess they should have gone with Windows 2000, the price/performance leader.

--

Re:Sun is really in trouble

[Pinball Wizard]

Hmm...a perfectly good comment, marked as a troll being pro-Microsoft. Typical, substitute 'Linux' for Microsoft/Win2K and this probably would have been +3, Informative.

Ah Well. So much for getting all sides of a story on this forum.

This guy is right: check out tpc.org and you will see an industry standard ranking of database servers. Windows 2000/SQL Server does indeed blow away all other contenders, running the heaviest IBM and Sun iron and Oracle.

However, I don't think Sun is really in trouble. Rather, Microsoft is. The are still the belligerent company they always have been, and I for one have developed a severe distaste of having to deal with incompatible software and devious methods to hook people into staying their customers. So what if it performs better, I need software that works well with everything else I use.

Take a lesson from IBM, and quit trying to dominate the world. Treat people as humans rather than competitors to be crushed, and perhaps the anti-Microsoft sentiment will fade. Until then, expect people to go with other solutions.

Weather.com's past connections to linux

[freedman]

This move on weather.com's part is not incredibly surprising (although auspicious for open source/free software's continued growth) as the parent company of weather.com is Landmark Communications, which has relatively deep connections to the open source community. The chairman of Landmark Communications, Frank Batten Jr., was personally an early angel investor in Red Hat, and now his company has funded ($25 million) a subsidiary, Great Bridge LLC to provide commercial support for the advanced BSD-licensed PostgreSQL. The press releases detailing the connection between these companies can be found here.