{"id":5713,"date":"2006-01-25T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-25T18:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/windowsserver\/2006\/01\/25\/moving-unix-units\/"},"modified":"2021-09-17T16:58:45","modified_gmt":"2021-09-17T23:58:45","slug":"moving-unix-units","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows-server\/blog\/2006\/01\/25\/moving-unix-units\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving UNIX Units"},"content":{"rendered":"
As you may know, there are lots of folks in our division that think about Unix. Whether that’s Unix interoperability<\/a>, Unix migration<\/a> or the Unix roadmap of the system providers. While we rarely discuss<\/a> Unix\u00a0 in this forum, there were a few items that hit the inbox at once today that happened to catch my eye.<\/p>\n First, InformationWeek published a noteworthy feature<\/a> and sidebar<\/a> titled, “What’s left of Unix?” I recommend reading it. Here’s an excerpt:<\/p>\n The past few years haven’t been kind to Unix. Two longtime commercial backers, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, have diverted resources and energy into promoting Linux at the expense of their Unix offerings. Sun Microsystems’ Solaris wasn’t selling so well, so it embarked on an open-source strategy to give it away. SCO Group, which owns the venerable Unix System V code base, is distracted by intellectual-property lawsuits against IBM and other Linux backers. John Loiacono, Sun’s senior VP of software, recently referred to HP-UX and IBM’s AIX as “the dead Unixes.” Competitive bluster to be sure, but Loiacono may not be far off in that assessment.<\/p>\n In the ’90s, Unix was set to become the dominant operating system for heavy-duty computing, with Windows the only threat. But the rise of Linux and steady maturation of Windows have darkened Unix’s future. Spending for Unix licenses and maintenance was just over $2 billion in 2004, down $51 million from the year before, according to IDC, which predicts the market will be stagnant over the next few years.<\/p>\n Unix’s future hinges partly on future development and support and partly on how long vendors can make money at it. “Unix will clearly survive as a legacy operating system, as there is an enormous investment in Unix hardware that won’t go away any time soon,” says Joshua Greenbaum, an analyst with Enterprise Applications Consulting. “But I don’t know of anyone whose initial software development plans specify Unix. That’s a very 20th century idea.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nearly at the same time, CNET published this Q&A with Sun’s John Fowler<\/a>, who leads Sun’s charges to sell servers on the x86 platform. Perhaps influenced by\u00a0my recent\u00a0business trip to\u00a0Austin, but I was interested to read Fowler’s answers to questions about their high-end x86 server strategy and the OS sales mix on x86 servers.\u00a0 Thanks to the reporter for asking the same question a few different ways, Fowler eventually shared some insights on those topics.<\/p>\n But I suspect Fowler was being cautious because the actual interview probably took place during Sun’s quiet period (prior to 4p.m. ET on Jan. 24). Once the Q2\u00a0results<\/a> were revealed, we learned<\/a> that Sun shipped about 20,000\u00a0x64 servers (this includes 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x86 servers) in the period Oct-Dec 2005, which\u00a0was\u00a0about 25% of Sun’s total server unit shipments for the quarter. Based on the IR charts, it appears that’s the high water mark for Fowler’s group.<\/p>\n