No other major IT platform vendor has committed so much of its core assets to the open-source software model as Sun Microsystems. Certainly, companies such as IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems have dramatically expanded their own open-source strategies in recent years, but only Sun has literally open-sourced nearly the entire family of products — that is, its intellectual property (IP) — from its operating system to Java. Sun also recently finished the acquisition of MySQL, the open-source database management system (DBMS), and is in the process of integrating it into the Sun family of products. These are bold moves for Sun — ones that may energize its competitive momentum and place it firmly in a position of thought leadership at the forefront of an evolving IT industry. They are also risky moves, given that its strategy is a trailblazing effort with little precedent and few historical success stories to reference. The market response to Sun's early steps in this direction has been guarded, but opportunities for stronger momentum still exist.

In many ways, Sun's strategy is a amalgamation of the approach taken by open-source startup entrepreneurs but also larger established technology providers. On the one hand, by aggressively open sourcing so much of its core IP, its success depends on the ability to "on-ramp" (that is, upgrade) customers to commercial product versions that offer expanded features, service and support for mainstream and enterprise needs. This is essentially the core strategy for most pure-play open-source companies (nearly all small startups). On the other hand, this strategy is also similar to its large and more traditional IT competitors (such as IBM, HP and BEA). These vendors leverage an indirect strategy wherein open-source technology is embedded and integrated into a wide range of closed-source products. Sun is unique in the combination of its aggressive approach to open-source IP (its own and others) and its financial size, traditional market presence and established customer base.

In previous research, we classified commercial open-source business strategies into four distinct categories:

• Sponsor open-source projects and solutions as an active member of a community.
• Leverage open-source software embedded in other products and services.
• Support and integrate selected products and services with open-source solutions.
• Provide direct, commercialized products and services of open-source solutions.

Here, we measure the impact of open-source software within Sun's business strategies in each category (see Table 1 and Note 1).

Sponsor open-source projects and solutions as an active member of a community.

Sun has sponsored numerous open-source initiatives directly and has joined other projects as well. Some of the more notable Sun-sponsored efforts are the office productivity suite (OpenOffice.org), an open-source version of its flagship operating system (OpenSolaris), and, most recently, the three principal implementations of the Java technology platform — Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME), Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE). In addition, Sun sponsors a distributed system management solution (GridEngine), an integrated development environment (NetBeans), a portal server, a scalable game server, a 3-D user environment, OpenStorage, OpenSPARC and many others. In the second category of project (membership), Sun is a leading participant in such projects as the GNOME desktop and the X.org X Window system, as well as, to a lesser degree, in many other projects where it works to optimize them for Sun's platforms. The impact of these efforts on Sun's larger business strategy is clearly extensive and shows signs of continued commitment and expansion in the future as well.

Support and integrate selected products and services with open-source solutions.

Sun integrates with open-source solutions in several areas. Its Solaris operating system ships with many open-source desktop solutions integrated within it, such as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, PostgreSQL DBMS, and so on. Sun resells various commercial Linux distributions (Red Hat, SUSE) pre-installed on hardware the way that some other systems vendors do. Sun's stated future direction for its software business is based on subscriptions for open-source software in whose communities Sun is engaged. Thus, one might regard Sun's strategy for the future as exclusively involving the integration of open-source solutions. The impact of these efforts on Sun's larger business strategy is extensive, and we expect even deeper levels of integration with many open-source projects in coming years.

Leverage open-source software embedded in other products and services.

Sun's participation in many of the projects it has not initiated is driven by this strategy (along with integration). For example, GNOME and X.org are fundamental components of Sun's desktop offering, and Sun was one of the initial funding sources for the Mozilla Foundation, in which it remains heavily engaged. Today, much of Sun's own IP is in large part open-sourced, and its products are largely built on a foundation of open-source solutions. The impact of these efforts on Sun's larger business strategy is extensive, and we believe its supporting business strategies (sponsor, support and integrate) will strengthen this strategy in coming years as well.

Provide direct, commercialized products and services for open-source solutions.

Sun primarily provides direct commercialized open-source offerings of its own technology that are open-sourced (for example, OpenSolaris, Java and so on). Sun provides a no-charge access to Sun's software technology and offers commercial service and support contracts for customers who require robust service-level agreements. Sun also has partnered with Greenplum (a massively parallel data warehouse DBMS solution based on PostgreSQL) to offer a data warehouse appliance, sold and supported by Sun, capable of competing with HP's Neoview, IBM's Balanced Warehouse and Teradata. Most recently Sun's acquisition of MySQL has positioned it as a leader in the growing market for open-source DBMSs. The MySQL acquisition is one step that further establishes Sun as a preferred "open-source platform" vendor capable of offering solutions ranging from the operating system, to middleware, to tools, to the desktop. Today no other vendor can provided as broad and deep a set of open-source technology within an integrated stack supported by a single vendor.

The impact of these efforts on Sun's larger business strategy is extensive, and we believe its focus on the complete integrated platform stack will remain a unique market advantage during the next several years. We must also consider that as Sun adds additional stack components to its portfolio (regardless of whether these are open source), the propensity for further competitive overlap with other software vendors (such as Oracle and SAP) can only grow.

Today, Sun has committed its core IP to the open-source technology model more than any other major platform vendor. This strategy comes at its own risk; on-ramping free community products to "enterprise" subscription services is a challenge for any vendor with a commercial open-source strategy. However, Sun has a strong history of open and collaborative efforts — even preceding the formalized concept of open source in some areas. Of all the major platform vendors (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, HP and so on), Sun is best-positioned to drive the integrated open-source "stack" into the mainstream. Its success and challenges will provide the reference points by which other vendors will measure their own commitments in coming years.

Dealing with the dynamics of the open-source model is becoming unavoidable for customers of virtually all large-scale platform vendors; Sun is not alone is this respect. However, the exposure to open source via Sun is larger than for any other vendor of its kind. This affords potential customers with a more direct "touchpoint" into the open-source model than they may see from competitors. Consequently, Sun customers must be more aware of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges afforded by the open-source model than they might require from other vendors. Certainly, Sun's business strategy is to maximize the opportunities of open source and minimize potential weaknesses; its size and market influence separate it in this regard from market startups. However, more than any other vendor, the core of open source provides the central focus of its business strategy moving forward. Sun will succeed where open source succeeds. Sun will fail where open source fails. In a typical "Catch-22," Sun will both drive and be dependent on the success of the open-source software model in mainstream IT. The bottom line, therefore, is whether Sun can sustain this level of commitment and achieve financial success in this new venture without compromising more-established revenue streams elsewhere.

• Understand that investments in Sun products and services will include a commitment to a wide range of open-source technologies as well.
• Carefully monitor Sun's investments and initiatives in open source to collect insights into its future directions.
• Monitor Sun's momentum as it endeavors to establish a success story around the synergy of open source and its commercial software and hardware efforts.

This research is part of a set of related research pieces. See "The State of Open Source, 2008" for an overview.