Michael Dell and Sun's Jonathan Schwartz will be together on stage here at Oracle Open World in San Francisco to announce an historical partnership: the Texas-based company will resell and offer support for Sun's free/open-source operating system Solaris. Sun already certified some Dell servers, as well as HP and IBM machines, to work well with Solaris but support, especially for large customers like the US Navy, was an issue.

"It was not seamless. Customers will call us and if we can't find the solution then we try to find someone at Sun support to help. With this agreement, it'll be totally transparent for customers", says Rick Becker, vice president of solutions in the Dell Product Group.

Starting first quarter of next year, customers will be able to download a copy of Solaris on Dell's website, as well as request a pre-install of the OS when they order a server online. They will also be able to buy service and support for Solaris directly from Dell.

"Dell badge employees will offer the Solaris support and hand it off to a Sun badge if needed. This agreement will be revenue generating for both companies", adds Becker.

However, the real winner in this deal is Michael Dell. His company will benefit from sales of both Sun's operating systems and its own hardware. What about Sun? Will Solaris become another JAVA: a free open-source business that directly contributed to the success of a lot of companies (BEA, IBM, etc..) but not to Sun's top/bottom line? That's what you get when you have a blogger running the company :-)