Salesforce.com pulls plug on Sun's flagship Unix servers
Sun rises on Dell in SaaS future
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Exclusive Salesforce.com is chucking out the last of it Sun Microsystems' Sun Fire servers this week, ending one of Sun's most bragged about relationships.
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) pioneer told The Reg that the last of its Sun Fire E25Ks are leaving two massive US-based global data centers, reflecting a shift to standardize on Sun's low-cost, commodity rival Dell.
The move comes as Salesforce.com prepares to bring up a new data center in Singapore to serve its SaaS platform, which now supports 43,600 customers. The center is based entirely on Dell from the start, while the older centers are being migrated.
Chief executive Marc Benioff told us Salesforce.com had picked Dell because it offered the "highest quality/lowest cost" ratio. He declared: "The Sun has set at Salesforce."
"Our data centers have already absorbed 100s [sic] of Dell servers, and our new Singapore data center will be 100 per cent Dell. There is nothing better than Dell."
It's a blow to Sun who's been trying to position its Sparc and UltraSPARC systems as the natural choice for SaaS and Web 2.0 service providers. According to Sun, its servers combine scalability and performance with the ability to grow as companies attract more and more users. Sun would also like you to pay for its services to maintain the systems, something that notches up over time.
The big rival to Sun's massively engineered and supported UltraSPARC boxes running Solaris are the lower-priced Dell boxes running Linux.
Benioff did not say what Dell servers or operating system Salesforce.com will run, citing competitive reasons. It's likely, though, Salesforce.com is running Linux.
The E25Ks are understood to have been introduced as part of a massive Salesforce data-center update that followed a service outage in December 2005 that upset customers and brought the company some bad publicity.
Sun's Chairman Scott McNealy loved to point to Salesforce's embrace of Sun. He urged that this positioned Sun at the head of the continued internet build out. In addition, he would brag that Sun was a huge Salesforce.com customer. "If you go to the eBay web site, you see 'Powered by Sun'. SalesForce.com runs on Sun," McNealy said a couple years back. Now, neither is true. ®
COMMENTS
So they're IDIOTS
Gaaah! Substituting big oxen with 1024 chickens isn't "the way forward!" If my former boss were reading this article, he would be laughing his ass off the screen!!!
As much as I like Linux, Solaris as an OS and Sun's hardware is pretty stable, secure, and not-another-Intel-based-crap-hardware. If I already have something as big as an E25k ... I'm not about to dump it in favor of Intel-based shite.
Flames, as those who took this decision will BURN IN HELL!
Sun is still installed at Salesforce.com
As a Unix consultant, and someone who has been in the valley 25 years, there is only a small bit of truth to this. For the most part the infrastructure is still Sun, there is a piece that went to Dell. Much of Salesforces IT management team is directly from eBay, (I know they use to hire me as a consultant) and they are still buying Sun at eBay and at Salesforce.
The gamesmenship here is Mr. Benioff Michael Dell are neighbors in Kona ...
IT Sales feeding on the carnage
This is pure sales politics at its best. The IT industry depends and thrives on situations like this - stealing customers away by convincing them they'll save money with [brand] hardware and making huge profits in the process. Trust me, Sun will do the exact same thing to Dell at some other account. However, based on Sun’s current market performance, they better hurry up and do it! ;)
As for which server is better, I'll just plagiarize an old martial arts axiom, "There are no superior servers. There are only superior server admins."
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