Unix vendors get creative in face of Windows, Linux competition

Special Focus  By Jennifer Mears, Network World, 02/05/07

A little less than a year ago, Internet Brands, which operates Web sites for big ticket purchases such as cars, homes and mortgages, was looking to rid itself of the big ticket hardware in its data center.

The company had been running Solaris on expensive Sun boxes since it launched as CarsDirect in 1998. But early last year, as it revamped itself with a new name to reflect its expanded business focus, it also was looking to refresh its hardware, with the aim of cutting costs.

“People wanted to go to Linux," says Min Kang, director of IT at the firm in El Segundo, Calif.

With Unix maturing out of its expensive, big server days into more flexible packages that, in Sun’s case, can even run on competitors’ hardware, Kang and his team had broader options.

Today, the company’s Web sites, which get about 15 million unique visitors monthly, are supported primarily by Dell servers running Solaris.

“This gives us freedom because Solaris on x86 runs on pretty much anything: you can run it on HP, you can run it on Dell — you can choose your hardware. But then you also get the reliability of Solaris support and that’s my main thing — support," Kang says. “If Sun didn’t have Solaris 10 on x86 we would probably have gone to Linux."

It’s that type of scenario that has all the Unix vendors — HP, IBM and Sun — on their toes. As x86 servers become increasingly capable, IT managers are taking a closer look at their Unix installations to determine whether a move to Linux or Windows might make sense, analysts say.

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