HP and Sun ink Solaris deal

Sun and HP will bundle Solaris on several ProLiant and blade server models

Sun Microsystems and HP have agreed to a new deal which will see the Solaris software platform offered on HP servers.

HP will bundle Solaris on several of its ProLiant and blade server models. The companies also plan to work on future server models equipped with both Solaris and OpenSolaris.

Other operating systems offered in the ProLiant line include Windows Server and Linux.

Mark Potter, senior vice president and general manager for blade system and Insight software at HP, claimed that that the deal was partly sparked by demand from HP customers.

"The combination of Solaris and HP ProLiant delivers superior performance, scalability and virtualisation capabilities on x86 servers," he said.

"Backed by industry-leading HP Technology Services, the agreement gives our joint customers complete confidence to grow their businesses while also controlling costs."

Sun explained that the move was designed to increase the exposure of Solaris. "The endorsement of Solaris on HP ProLiant dramatically expands the available market for Solaris on x86 servers, building on the largest installed base of any commercial Unix and Linux distribution," said Sun executive vice president of systems John Fowler.

"The growing demand and ecosystem around Solaris helps to further propel its adoption, along with breakthrough technologies like ZFS and DTrace, and outstanding operational economics and market-leading support for thousands of independent software vendors and applications."

The deal will make Sun an official operating system partner for the ProLiant line, although HP noted that the partnership will not extend to its Integrity server line, where the company's own HP-UX system will remain the operating system of choice.