OpenSolaris Available on Amazon EC2

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (JAVA) today said its OpenSolaris Operating System (OS) will be available on Amazon EC2, part of the Amazon utility computing platform. Sun also is adding premium technical support for its MySQL database running on Linux and Amazon EC2 to its global support and services offerings.

In case you were wondering, this is the news Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz was hinting about yesterday at Startup Camp. It coincided with today's official launch of OpenSolaris. "Support for OpenSolaris and MySQL on Amazon EC2 expands the reach and convenience for developers who want to quickly deploy their applications on the Web by taking advantage of Amazon Web Services," said Rich Green, executive, vice president of Software, Sun Microsystems. "Sun aims to continue to offer additional options to use and deploy our open source platforms - covering the spectrum from small home-grown installations through to on-site data centers and hosted environments such as Amazon EC2."

What's the significance of the OpenSolaris on EC2? Bob Warfield says Sun's move is a nod to the growing importance of Amazon:

A number of vendors are already offering their solutions via Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2, including GigaSpaces, Rightscale, Thoughtworks and Zmanda.