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Sun, University of Pisa Dept of Physics Open OpenSolaris CoE in Italy
IT News Online Staff
2006-08-30

Sun Microsystems Italy and the Department of Physics at the University of Pisa have partnered to create the first Center of Excellence for the OpenSolaris technology platform. The center will provide technological expertise and support to academic institutions, businesses and developers.

Sun said OpenSolaris is one of its most recent and important open source projects, following its decision to further contribute to the open source development model by making the entire source code of the Solaris Operating System (OS) available. The code has been downloaded more than 5 million times since its release a year ago.

"The open source development model is radically changing the way software is built, creating a market with an almost unlimited availability of modules and programs enabling rapid and low cost development of new software. At the same time open source has driven an unprecedented transfer of technology to our country: OpenSolaris alone amounts to over $500 million in investments and over 1,600 patents," said Franco Roman, director of Marketing and Partner Sales, Sun Microsystems Italy.

"The creation, unique to our country, of a Center of Excellence for such an advanced operating system, is a great opportunity to relaunch the software industry in Italy," added Roman.

"In this context, we view the collaboration with the University as a formidable tool to expand innovation and encourage developers by sharing technology culture among young people and businesses," said Giacomo Tufano, software solutions practice manager, Sun Microsystems Italy.

The Department of Physics of the University of Pisa has been actively studying UNIX systems for many years and is dynamically involved in a local network made up by public and private organizations to promote and extend IT culture and research.

"Physics research is characterized by increasingly processing complexity, continuously posing new challenges to those who design and redesign data analysis and calculus software. Physics is therefore the sector ideally suited for the creation of a cross-discipline community of developers able to fully leverage the potential of an Open Source approach," said Prof. Paolo Rossi, director of the Department of Physics "E. Fermi".

"From our point of view the Open Source nature of OpenSolaris represents an 'express lane' to sharing and spreading technological expertise that can function as a base and amplifier for further studies and development. It should also be noted how useful such a technology transfer can be to the academic community and the local private and public sectors," said Maurizio Davini, head of the Department of Physics' Computing Center of Pisa University.

The Center of Excellence will work to bring together and animate an Italian community of OpenSolaris developers through the www.opensolaris-it.org portal, by designing a set of initiatives aimed at involving and informing the development world and academic network. Some of these initiatives include the organization of seminars on the OpenSolaris technology platform, the creation of a catalogue of OpenSolaris compatible applications and the localization of the operating system.

Sun said that one of the first initiatives of the OpenSolaris Center of Excellence will be a contest, open to all Solaris/OpenSolaris users and developers, to assign an award to those delivering open applications of any kind through migration or porting, running on the Solaris platform.

The Department of Physics of the University of Pisa, in conjunction with the Center of Excellence Center for the OpenSolaris platform, will also perform academic and benchmark studies in specific application environments such as super calculus, accessible through the portal and through targeted communication initiatives.