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Sun Plans To Make Java Enterprise System Open Source: Page 2 of 2

With both Solaris and Java Enterprise System available, Sun will be established as "the single largest contributor to the open-source movement on the planet," he says.
Schwartz says Sun is now aggressively targeting the Solaris licenses for opportunities to "up-sale, cross-sale, and side-sale not only the middleware we have to offer but the update services, servers, and storage we deliver. Solaris to me is the world's best hunting dog for going out and finding new opportunities for Sun."

Currently, about a third of all Solaris shipments are being used on Sun SPARC-based systems, and two-thirds are deployed on x86-based systems, he says. Of the x86 deployments, about 95% were on non-Sun hardware.

The open-source efforts are aiding Sun's overall growth, Schwartz says, which he believes will help the financial condition of the company. Although the company reported a $19 million profit for its fiscal second quarter, which ended Dec. 26, 2004, it has reported a net loss of $128 million so far for fiscal year 2005, which followed a net loss of $376 million in fiscal year 2004. The company's stock is hovering around $4 a share.

But Schwartz says the company's position, with $7.5 billion in cash and a market cap of more than $14 billion, is the most important metric. "We would like to continue to target more growth in the share price, [but] we've been focused as much on operating efficiency over the past 12 months as we have been on growth," he says. "We've made significant strides forward by growing the number of customers we have, which is what the Solaris licensing activity is targeted towards."