Sun Announces Project Orion Beta

Sun has announced the first
Project Orion Beta Program. The program is meant to allow customers a
chance to both try out Sun’s new “software train” of highly integrated
applications built around its Solaris OE, and arrive at configurations
that work best prior to launch of the finished product.

Solaris OE customers can begin to get a look at Sun’s new software release and licensing paradigm as the company unveils the first Orion beta.

Under Orion, applications such as Sun’s directory, mail, or instant
messaging servers will be synchronized with Solaris’ quarterly release
cycle and united under a single provisioning interface, essentially
expanding the Solaris OE to an aggregation of the services it runs and
the core Solaris operating system.

Supported operating systems under the Orion beta are currently
limited to Sun’s own Solaris for SPARC and x86. Support for Red Hat
Linux has been announced for the final version of the product line,
which is expected to be completely available by February of next year.

Services currently available under the beta include:

• Sun ONE Directory, Identity, Directory Proxy servers.
• Sun ONE Application Server PE/SE/EE
• Sun ONE Message Queue EE
• Sun ONE Web Server
• Sun ONE Messaging Server
• Sun ONE Calendar Server
• Sun ONE Instant Messaging
• Sun ONE Portal Server
• Sun ONE Portal Secure Remote Access
• Sun Cluster

Orion will also involve a change in licensing practices for Sun:
traditional single-component licensing for each service, a
subscription model, and a metered license, which the company has previously
said it doesn’t expect to be popular. Details on the latter two
models have yet to be announced.

More information on the Orion Beta is available on Sun’s Project Orion
homepage.