The technical industry has always had tremendous ebbs and flows. Just ask powerful or up and coming companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, Silicon Graphics, Informix, Netscape, Atari, and even Sun. Yet sometimes, "everything is in the timing".
With the current economic environment, it is safe to say that all organizations are taking a very serious look at how to reduce costs. This perspective is likely to continue through at least 2009 and 2010. Sun's software stack is positioned in the right place at the right time. Sun's current software stack will significantly reduce operational costs and provide more flexibility over operational budgets. As costs continue to impact organizations, you will see more traditional organizations follow the direction of start up companies.
Ninety percent of start up companies in the U.S. are using the LAMP stack (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP,Perl). The LAMP stack is a proven software stack that offers tremendous cost savings over proprietary licenses. Sun's software stack is a faster, cost effective and enterprise version of the LAMP stack. So we can expect more and more organizations looking at and moving to the Sun software stack. I'm seeing this every week in my training classes. My students are selling me on all the benefits they are receiving from this stack. And a major percentage of my students are from proprietary vendor environments.
Major Areas of the Sun Software Stack
Major areas of the software stack that will dramatically reduce costs versus alternative options:
- MySQL - The fastest growing database server in the industry. The adoption rate is increasing every month.
- Glassfish - A powerful, fast enterprise application server that is a fraction of the cost of its competitors. A great solution for customers that are growing out of their Apache and JBoss servers.
- Open Storage - With the ever increasing volumes of data that organizations need to work with, storage will continue having a significant impact on IT budgets.
- Identity Management - Fast enterprise identity management. Sun has one of the best LDAP solutions out in the industry.
- Solaris/OpenSolaris - Offer proven powerful software solutions that can significantly reduce OS costs.
- Java - Key software for mobile applications and large enterprise business applications.
So as the trend continues, watch as the Sun software stack increases in popularity. There are reports that the government is evaluating increasing its use of open source to reduce license costs. It won't take much more for the Sun software stack to become a major tipping point in the software industry.
