Fujitsu to Sell Intel-Based Solaris Servers

Japanese computer giant Fujitsu announced today it will support Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system on servers powered by Intel's 32-bit and forthcoming 64-bit Merced processors.

Fujitsu also said it will join Sun and NCR in Sun's Solaris Business Council, where it will help in the development a single version of Solaris that will run on both the 32-bit and 64-bit Intel architectures, Junji Maeyama, president of Fujitsu's software group, said in a teleconference.

The 32-bit systems will be delivered in Japan and other parts of Asia in the second half of this year, with 64-bit systems scheduled to follow in both Asia and the US in the second half of 1999, Maeyama said. The systems in the US will be sold through Fujitsu's Amdahl subsidiary.

Fujitsu brings to Sun its expertise in mainframe and datacenter technologies, and will enhance the scalability and reliability of Solaris by contributing diagnostic, tracing and other extensions to the platform, said John McFarlane, vice president and general manager of Sun's Solaris and network software group. The deal also brings Sun the support of the world's third largest system vendor, McFarlane said.

Maeyama said Solaris will provide Fujitsu servers with a powerful environment for running data warehousing applications, and said the platform will offer Fujitsu with a solid upgrade path to Intel's Merced.

Oracle tomorrow will announce a version of Oracle8 for Solaris on Intel, McFarlane said. Sun now boasts about 3400 applications for the Intel-based platform, a figure that is growing by about 150 releases a month, he said.

Offering a single version of Solaris for both 32- and 64-bit systems will make Solaris an attractive platform for independent software developers to write programs for, McFarlane said.

The collaboration extends an already long relationship between Sun and Fujitsu. Fujitsu is both a major manufacturer of Sun's Sparc RISC microprocessors and seller of Sun workstations and servers. The two companies jointly developed the first Japanese version of Solaris.