In case you haven’t heard the news, there has been a little shift in the Solaris Express program. For some time now we’ve had 2 version of express: Solaris Express (SX) and Solaris Express: Community Release (SX:CR). The products have re-organized slightly and we now have: Solaris Express Developer Edition (‘SXDE”) and Solaris Express Community Edition (“SXCE”). The difference being that DE is on a 3-4 month release cycle based on Nevada with more current utilities and applications that might be considered unstable by S10 standards, whilst CE will continue to be released bi-weekly following Nevada Build releases and be bleeding edge.

There are a couple upshots of this new breakdown. The first is that its a much more streamlined and rational breakdown. Maybe its me but SX and SXCR never seemed like things that were nailed to the floor if you will.

The second is that special support will be available for SXDE is much more solid and comprehensive than it was with Solaris Express in the past. DE support includes other developer technologies including Java SE, Java EE and S10, which are supplimented by products including SXDE, Sun Studio, Java Studio and Netbeans. For $249.00 per developer you can choose 1 year of unlimited support for one of those products or technologies, and for $549.00 per developer you get support for all of them. Note that this support (“Sun Developer Expert Assistance”) is email based only, you can send questions 24/7 but you can’t call. If you want phone support you’ll need to uplift to a “Software Service Plan” which is $864 per year per product for 12/5 support and $1,200 per year per product for 24/7 support, both plans are per developer. Learn more here: Sun Developer Expert Assistance (I recommend viewing the “Buying Guide” PDF.)

The third point of interest is that this leaves the door open for various different editions of Solaris Express. Solaris Express PostgreSQL Edition? Solaris Express Web2.0 Edition? Solaris Express Joyent Edition? There are some options now available that would have seemed odd before.

For more details on the new Solaris Express layout please read the Solaris Express, Developer Edition FAQ.