Systems/Enterprise:
SUN UNVEILS NEW SERVERS,
DATA-STORAGE GEAR
Network computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. announced new entry-level
servers
and data-storage equipment aimed at the mid-market, in its latest quarterly
release of new products and services.
Sun Microsystems said that the Sun Fire V210, which starts at $2,995, is
suitable for use in dishing up Web pages and technical computing farms. The
Sun Fire V240, which starts at $3,495, is for use in racks of other servers at
corporate data centers where reliability is key. Both are available later this
month.
Sun also announced two new products targeted at the mid-range of the
storage
market and principally at rival Hewlett-Packard Co., said Mark Tolliver, Sun's
executive vice president of marketing and strategy and chief strategy
officer.
The StorEdge 6120 array, which costs $24,300 and up, is a modular array
that
can grow into a complete storage system, Sun said, while the StorEdge 6320
system is a complete storage system that can be managed from a single console.
It starts at $67,600 and both products will be available later this month.
In February, Sun staged another large product announcement, the first in
its
plan to announce products, services and one a quarter, rather than in dribs
and drabs.
The firm said that was an attempt to reduce confusion among customers and
to
bolster its belief that high-tech customers care more about the total package
of servers, software and networking gear than the elemental pieces.
Sun, along with rivals International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM -
news)
and HP, is working to make servers much more efficient, ultimately enabling
firms to spend less on hardware by getting more out of what they purchase, or
by consolidating a large number of servers onto fewer, more powerful ones, or
via clusters of cheap boxes.
Companies are wanting to automate tasks such as provisioning storage and
computer power by knitting together a network into a single "virtual" machine
rather than a patchwork of separate parts.
Sun, which makes computers that manage networks, dubs its software effort
to
automate compute, N1, while HP calls its own initiative "adaptive
infrastructure, and IBM calls its effort "on-demand computing."
Sun's latest N1 offering announced on Tuesday is what it calls N1 Data
Platform, which is a combination of switches that tie together storage pools,
along with software that lets customers allocate their storage resources, on
the fly, when needed.
Sun's N1 Data Platform is an outgrowth of Sun's purchase in October 2002 of
closely held Pirus Networks, which was a maker of switches that tie together
pools of data in data centers with storage products from different
manufacturers.
Sun also said it was taking a plunge for the first time into the managed
services portion of the computer services market.
"This is really the first time we have turned this into a professional
services program and offered it," Tolliver said. "The demand for this has gone
up enough that we think it's time to offer this as a formal part of our
program."
Under the program, Sun employees would remain at customers beyond the
installation of new systems and manage not only Sun components, but those of
rival vendors as well, on an ongoing basis, at variable prices.
"Typically in the past we'd take a limited time engagement to get it built
and
hand over the keys," Tolliver said. "Now we're saying we'll still do that,
but, if you prefer, we'll make arrangements to have people stay with you to
make sure everything is tuned and operating properly."
Both IBM, the biggest computer-services organization, HP, as well as
Electronic Data Systems Corp. have offered managed services, but in IBM's
case, it will also offer to buy a customer's hardware and move its employees
on its payroll, in a pure outsourcing deal.
"There is no sense of we'll buy you out of that business and run it out of
Sun
data centers," Tolliver said. "That's not what we're doing here."
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