Sorry to dampen your obvious enthusiasm Mr Halko, but this is no big deal. HP bought EDS, and EDS pushes Solaris as it's "Unix de preferance" (apologies for my quasi-French). So by making this announcement HP might sell a few more ProLiants (and they need all the sales they can get at the moment), and they look like they're offering choice. Heck, even IBM support's Solaris so - being bitchy about it - maybe this HP announcement is just them playing catchup with Big Blue.

Want to bet against them offering a sweet deal to customers with software subscription, hardware maintance and support - a triple play? No? Me neither. ;)

Oh, and according to the article, it's the "full fat" Solaris that they're pushing, not (necessarily) the "Open" variety. Don't think I'm slagging off Solaris, because I'm not - heck I run it at home myself and it's quite neat, and I'd push it rather than HPUX in a heartbeat. And the guy (or guys or gals - whatever) who decided to allow free licenses for Solaris x86 gets a free beer from me.