Sun Solaris: Leading Internet OS offers scalable performance and situation-specific bundles Page 3

While as a whole we give Solaris the operating system a five-star rating, we do have some serious problems with the ISP Server bundle, especially with the hidden costs associated with adding news, FTP and Web-server software to a bundle that’s designed specifically for ISPs. If Sun were serious about targeting ISPs with software designed to work together, it wouldn’t charge extra for FTP, news and Web-server software.

Solaris is perhaps the most popular operating system on the Internet (although Windows NT and Linux fans might dispute this), especially on the corporate level where e-commerce is concerned. We’ve not discussed e-commerce here, for a good reason: Sun doesn’t sell a specific e-commerce solution, and for you to adopt one you’ll be forced to combine third-party solutions with Solaris. (There are a slew of them, however; check out the internet.com E-Commerce Guide for more information.) And, in general, you’re going to need to do a fair amount of planning and advanced configuration work, even if you shell out the extra dollars for all the Sun products. Still, from a pure performance level, Solaris is hard to beat. It’s one of the most powerful operating systems you can use for Internet/intranet purposes, and anyone concerned about sheer performance should begin their shopping with Solaris.

Pros: High-performance operating system that scales from a modest PC installation to multiprocessor servers; proven performance track record of thousands of Internet installations employing Solaris.

Cons: Pricing and bundling schemes are not the most logical; you may need to put together your own suite of supporting tools and rely on the operating system to provide a high level of performance.