While some have been waiting for Oracle to finally kill off Solaris, it seems there is life in the old dog yet.

The maker of database software has announced that rival hardware vendors Dell and Hewlett-Packard intend to certify and resell its Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems as well as Oracle VM on their x86 servers. Company co-president Charles Phillips said in a statement that the move "demonstrates Oracle's commitment to openness", or as we would put it, we'll sell Solaris to anyone who will buy it.

He said it proved that Solaris is simply in demand for use on multiple x86 server platforms, he added. Bloomberg asked an HP executive what the cunning plan was and was told that many of its punters had hardwired stacks of applications and infrastructure
that can't rapidly change. Dell and HP x86 users can buy Premier Support contracts from Oracle as a result of the agreement, and gain access to future updates.

Oracle still has a few problems left. OpenSolaris governing board members have threatened to disband if it does not get a few answers from Oracle about the future of the system.