Gasp! Sun loses that Old Time Religion

OMG. It can now be stated plainly: Sun Microsystems, thanks to an expansion of its three-year-old alliance with one-time nemesis Microsoft will now resell and install Windows on its x86-based servers. In other words, the company that was famous for its scrappy David vs. Goliath war with the forces of Wintel will sell servers built around Intel chips and Windows software. That's a long way from the days when former Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy proclaimed: "It's mankind against Microsoft."

But that doesn't mean the company has become agnostic. Rather, the Sept. 12 move was the ultimate expression of Sun's new religion—one that in some ways is just as risky. If Sun was once defined largely by who its rivals were, it's now partnering with many of them in an effort to ensure as many customers as possible have the option of buying its technologies.

The new Microsoft deal follows alliances with IBM and Intel, which Sun is trusting to resell its Solaris server software for customers who want it. It's another aspect of Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz's plan to drive adoption of Sun technologies as broadly as possible. The linchpin of the scheme: The 2005 plan to give away the battle-tested Solaris, Sun's crown jewel, for free. As a result of these efforts, "We can do business with 100% of the marketplace now. That's not something we could have said a few years ago,"

Very likely, none of this will amount to much in new sales for Microsoft. After all, every corporate technology buyer already uses Windows and knows how to buy Wintel machines from Dell, Hewlett-Packard , and others. But executives from Sun and Microsoft say the new deal will let them more effectively serve the many customers that use both Solaris and Windows—typically with Solaris running the huge databases and complex programs that undergird corporate IT and e-commerce operations and Windows for less mission-critical jobs.

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