There were two primary reasons that IT professionals previously chose the SunTM SPARC® platform to power their IT infrastructures: the performance of the hardware and the robustness of the SolarisTM operating system. As price, performance, and reliability of industry standard x86_64 servers have increased to the point where they can meet and exceed these features, the reasons to continue buying SPARC hardware have become less and less compelling. Similarly, Linux®, and in particular, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux, has emerged as the operating system of choice to leverage the benefits of an open, industry standard architecture.

This whitepaper will review some key features and benefits of both Solaris and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We will also explain why Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an ideal solution for enterprises that are facing Sun and SPARC's uncertain future, whether you are considering launching a new IT production environment or migrating a legacy environment to a next-generation platform.