** Sun Rolls Out Products To Fill Storage Gap
Story from InformationWeek on Sun's new storage products.
** Sun Rolls Out Products To Fill Storage Gap
Sun Microsystems, under pressure to diversify as competitors
challenge its dominance in the Unix server market, Wednesday
unveiled hardware, software, and services meant to jump-start
storage sales. Sun claims its new products offer a lower total
cost of ownership than products from rivals such as EMC, IBM,
and Compaq, all of which are ahead of Sun in the $7 billion-a-
year global server-storage market, according to the Yankee
Group.
Driving total cost of ownership is Sun's strategy of offering
all the components of a storage system in one package. "It's
complete," Sun president and chief operating officer Ed Zander
said at a news conference in San Francisco, where the company
is meeting with financial analysts this week. "The big message
today is complete storage solution."
The new hardware includes the Sun StorEdge 3900 and 6900
series for the low- and midrange markets, respectively, and an
update of the high-end 9900 series, which Sun guarantees can
deliver "100% data availability." Sun execs say the company
has already sold 200 of the 9900 servers and will sell 300
more by June. The company also unveiled its next-generation
file systems, the Sun StorEdge QFS and SAM-FS software. New
features include concurrent server access to the same file,
the ability to scale a single file system to 252 terabytes,
and enhancements for rapid disaster recovery. Sun also
introduced services to help customers install and implement
storage systems. In addition, the company disclosed the
opening of new Sun storage centers in Singapore, Scotland, and
Colorado.
Product diversification has become more important to Sun as
Wall Street becomes increasingly concerned with the
competitive pressure the company is feeling in its core server
business. Many analysts believe Sun is being squeezed by IBM
in the high-end market, while servers running Linux, an open-
source operating system, and Microsoft's Windows are making
inroads into the midrange market. In the near term, Sun sees
EMC as its biggest competitor in the storage market, but
believes it will compete more and more with IBM in providing
full storage systems. Said Zander, "Long term, I look at the
system vendors." - Antone Gonsalves
For more on Sun:
Storage Enhancements May Brighten Sun's Prospects
update.informationweek.com
Sun Reports $431 Million Net Loss
update.informationweek.com |
