Sun and IBM join forces to attack HP

RIVALS BIG GLUE and Sun have announced that they are working together to give HP what they hope will be a good kicking.

The two are to cooperate so that Sun's Solaris operating system will run on IBM servers. This means that IBM punters using Sun servers will be able to switch to Big Glue's hardware without having to rewrite any software.

First to see any changes will be Big Glue's "x" series of servers. These currently run Windows or Linux systems.

IBM's goal is apparently to enable Solaris to run on one of its mainframes. It wants to increase the types of software that can run on mainframes to encourage customers to consolidate multiple servers onto these bigger machines.

While this cunning plan would threaten to reduce the numbers of servers that Sun servers can sell, the outfit makes its cash flogging Solaris subscriptions and services revenue.

It also leaves HP out in the cold on its lonesome with no one to play with. More here. µ