Sun Microsystems, IBM and Sine Nomine Associates this week demonstrated the OpenSolaris code base running on the IBM mainframe, Sun and IBM said.The demonstration at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas followed Sine Nomine’s 2006 announcement of a plan to do the port. IBM and Sun in August said they would investigate a project to port OpenSolaris to the System z mainframe. Sine Nomine Associates is a research and engineering firm. OpenSolaris is open source code for the Solaris operating system. In the demonstration, OpenSolaris runs within the mainframe’s z/VM virtualization technology. “The future of the data center lies in virtualization’s ability to reduce skyrocketing energy and maintenance costs,” said James Stallings, general manager for IBM System z, in a statement released by the company. “Corporations around the world have for years relied on the IBM mainframe – which pioneered virtualization – to run their businesses. The Solaris operating system is similarly prevalent in data centers. It makes perfect sense to marry these two stalwarts in a virtualized mainframe environment.”IBM also has endorsed Sun’s xVM virtualization initiative. Software Development