DownSouth: Still curious whether Sun is a storage player. Is this news at all relevant to storage discussion?
Ancor Signs OEM Agreement to Provide Fibre Channel Switches to Sun Microsystems
Number One UNIX Storage Provider Chooses Ancor to Grow Storage Networks
MINNEAPOLIS, June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Ancor Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: ANCR)
today announced an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement to provide its Fibre
Channel 8-port switches for Sun Microsystems' StorEdge(TM) arrays.
"Our customers' storage requirements are doubling every nine to 12 months and require a
switched SAN solution that can scale with their growth," said Kathleen Holmgren, vice
president of business operations for Sun Network Storage. "We chose Ancor because of its
superior ability to scale and meet our customers' current and future interconnect
requirements."
"Sun's leadership position in the Fibre Channel storage market makes this win especially
significant as it endorses our current price/performance as well as our future technology
direction," said Cal Nelson, Ancor's president. "In addition, our continued participation with
Sun on the Project StoreX storage management initiative will ensure we can jointly deliver the
best open platforms for our customers."
"In revenue terms, Sun was the leading supplier of UNIX disk storage systems in 1998,"
according to Robert Gray, industry analyst for International Data Corporation. "This is an
important win for Ancor, as Sun is also a pioneering supplier of Fibre Channel-based storage
and currently one of the leading providers of Fibre technology."
As part of the agreement, Ancor has issued Sun Microsystems a warrant to purchase up to
1,500,000 shares of Ancor common stock at a purchase price of $7.30 per share. Vesting of
the warrant occurs at the rate of one share for each $67 of revenue received from Sun.
Sun was first to introduce Fibre Channel to the industry in 1995. Subsequently, the
introduction of Sun's StorEdge A5x00 second generation of Fibre Channel products in
November 1997 has propelled the company to its position as number one UNIX storage
vendor. More than 3 PetaBytes (PB) of these advanced storage systems, offering a full Fibre
solution from the host through the drive, have been shipped to date. The family of products
is available for both the Solaris(TM) and Windows NT(TM) operating systems.
About Ancor Fibre Channel Switches
Ancor's Fibre Channel switches are reliable, highly scalable devices that link multiple servers
and storage devices in storage area networks. Ancor's leading chip technology supports
exclusive features such as hard zoning for superior data security and cross-connected
configurations that enable SANs to grow while maintaining high performance and storage
network reliability. Ancor switches are available in both eight and 16-port configurations and
are sold to OEMs and select distributors.
Chaz too |
