The company last week announced plans to integrate the complete Java Enterprise System, JES, software stack with its Solaris operating system and give the whole thing away free of charge, while laying the foundations for open sourcing the whole JES stack.
While the Santa Clara, California-based company storage management software was not part of that announcement, Canepa told ComputerWire that its Java StorEdge Software, JSS, bundle is likely to go the same way.
As long as you’ve got a revenue stream that’s coming in and growing revenue, you can afford to be more flexible with your software licensing, he said. My guess is we’re going to end up in the exact some place [with JSS] with free rights for distribution.
The JSS bundle includes all the components of Sun’s Consolidation Suite, Continuity Suite, Content Suite, and Compliance Suite offerings, and is currently available licensed per employee or per terabyte.
While the JES components are free to download and run, Sun is banking on the fact that customers will still want and need to pay for support and maintenance contracts when the software is deployed in production environments, while also investing in Sun hardware.
Sun’s chairman and CEO Scott McNealy has compared the sales model to the razor blade business, where the razors – the software – are cheap, and the real money is made the razor blades that make them usable (the servers, storage, services, and support contracts).
Canepa explained how the company’s decision to give its Solaris operating system and JES software (to be combined as the Solaris Enterprise System) away free could of charge potentially open doors, not only to the server business, but also the data management group that was formed by Sun’s acquisition of StorageTek.
Giving away the JSS bundle would open the doors a little wider, which begs the question as to why the JSS software was not part of last week’s announcement. It’s a lot of work to do this stuff, Canepa said, noting that the company needed to ensure that the software was integrated and that the model was proven with JES. You’ll see us follow up with these, he said. There’s a lot of our storage products that have already been integrated, it’s a matter of staging.
