UCSD 2009 Sun Software Consortium Update
ACMS/Software Distribution started in large part about 20 years ago to support the Sun Software consortium. Today I got word that Sun is no longer offering the sunsolve software support contracts such as we have had. So 1/31/09 when our current contract ends, will mark the end of an era.
The large movement to the free distributions of Solaris and tools such as MySQL, and xVM Virtual box (http://www.sun.com/software/) seems to have marked the end to the need for paid OS updates and such as we have historically provided.
The UC system agreement that currently ends 04/25/2009 (with probability of renewal), is a baseline price schedule agreement for all Sun Hardware, Software, and Data Storage from Sun and what was StorageTek (The separate StorageTek agreement was merged with the sun Agreement). This does not include any specific software or support activities, just the discount structure from their list prices. But we do plan on keeping our discount agreement going system wide.
What replaced the sunsolve OS support? Sun now sells OS support priced by the "Socket", (not the cpu core). The details on Solaris Subscriptions (pricing per socket) are detailed at:
http://www.sun.com/service/subscriptions/prices.html
This support can be acquired for either purchased Solaris, or OpenSolaris, to get access to non-public patches and such for Solaris 7 and later as I read it.
Other software service plans are detailed at:
http://www.sun.com/service/serviceplanssoftware/index.jsp
And software support information specifically specifically starts at:
http://www.sun.com/software/index.jsp
Note:
On April 1, 2009, Solaris 8 will enter End of Service Life Phase 2. Customers who have been using Solaris 8 will not receive vintage patches, i.e. patches developed on or after April 1, 2009, not even security patches, unless they purchase the Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Service. See http://www.sun.com/service/eosl/Solaris8.html
Like the SGI OS agreement that went to the same general model of paying per machine, we will keep the final media for re-loads and such for those subscribed up to 1/31/09, for a while "just in case".
-ACMS/Software Distribution 1/31/2009