Oracle has released Solaris 11.4 Open Beta.

Oracle has launched new SPARC M8 based servers.

There are rumors that the SPARC M8 will be the “end of the line” for the SPARC architecture (due to the recent mass layoffs of Solaris software and SPARC hardware developers at Oracle) but these rumors have yet to be confirmed.

“The Sudden Death and Eternal Life of Solaris” is a blog article by Bryan Cantrill with his thoughts on Oracle’s recent staff terminations.

This tweet by Simon Phipps claims that a large portion of Solaris technical staff were let go – as a “Silent EOL” of the product – in the recent Oracle layoffs on Friday, September 1st.

An article at Phoronix discusses more recent layoffs in Sun/SPARC-related teams at Oracle.

According to this Ars Technicha article, Oracle is officially cancelling any plans for Solaris 12, instead focusing on what they call “Solaris 11.next”, which is expected to be released in late 2018 and last through 2021.

Oracle has released updated documentation covering up to current versions of the SPARC processor.

The latest iteration of the tech, the Sparc M7, is due to launch sometime next year – although exact dates remain vague – and to hear Ellison tell it, it’s “the most important thing we’ve done in silicon, maybe ever.”

Ellison pins Oracle’s hopes on cloud… and Sparc

Ellison: Sparc M7 is Oracle’s most important silicon EVER

Oracle reveals 32-core, 10 BEEELLION-transistor SPARC M7

This NetworkWorld article describes how Oracle is going after third-party companies who provide “illegal” Solaris support (patches, updates) to customers who don’t want to go through Oracle.

Oracle will soon be announcing that it’s discontinuing development of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Sun Ray software and hardware, and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client product lines.

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/important_information_about_oracle_desktop

http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-to-halt-development-of-sun-virtualization-technologies-7000018028/

I’m quoted in this TechTarget article about Oracle’s attitude toward the “hobbyist” community.

OpenSolaris.org shutting down 24 March 2013

http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/

If you need anything from OpenSolaris.org, now is the time to download and archive it.

Solaris 10 update 11 is available now.

Get it here:

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/solaris10/overview/index.html

Ars Technica has an article up about how the source code to Solaris 11 has been leaked to various file-sharing networks and services, but there has yet to be any sort of official reaction from Oracle. This has led some people to believe that the “leak” may not have been accidental.

Solaris 11 GA released

Today marks the release of Oracle Solaris 11, the first cloud OS.

Oracle Solaris 11 delivers ground-breaking features for secure and agile deployment of services in large scale cloud environments and enterprise data centers. With over 4,000 different new features, Oracle Solaris 11 raises the bar on enterprise operating systems. Oracle Solaris 11 is 7 years in the making and a whole new set of capabilities, from advanced network virtualization to high performance cryptography and virtualization, dependency aware software packing and installation technologies.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/whats-new/index.html

Download: http://oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.htm

Release Notes: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19963-01/index.html#release-info

Documentation: http://oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/index.html