Sun Thickens Up in the Middle

Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) has upgraded its midrange storage offerings with the StorEdge 6000 family, as rivals Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) are also enhancing their products in this segment (see Sun Intros Midtier StorEdge 6000 and HP, IBM Muscle Up Midrange).

The StorEdge 6120 replaces Sun's T3 offering [ed. note: it's not called the T4!] and the StorEdge 6320 replaces the 3900, a system Sun first introduced just a little more than a year ago (see Sun Recharges Storage Lineup).

Meanwhile, Sun revealed that it hasn't officially landed a single paying customer yet for Pirus Networks' virtualization switch -- after shelling out around $160 million in stock last summer to buy Pirus (see Pirus Gets Sun Tan and Sun Beams on Pirus).

Sun, which has renamed the Pirus box the "N1 Data Platform," referred us to two companies when we asked for customer references: AstraZeneca, a large pharmaceutical company, and Nielsen Media Research, the TV audience measurement service.

But each of these companies say they're still in the process of kicking the tires on it. "We are evaluating the N1 Data Platform functionality that would allow us to maintain multiple versions of our data while consuming a relatively small amount of disk space," says Marty Lefebvre, VP of storage services at Nielsen. "Consolidating storage services will provide both cost savings and productivity gains."Scott Thomas, director of discovery information systems at AstraZeneca's R&D facility in Boston, also says the company is in testing mode. "Sun's virtualization may allow us to reduce the cost of support," he says.

Nice testimonials, perhaps -- but kind words don't put money in the bank. A Sun spokeswoman says both AstraZeneca and Nielsen are expected to deploy the N1 Data Platform at the end of April or early May.

However, it would appear that in the more than three years since Pirus was founded, not one of these switches has actually been deployed in a production environment. That indicates that selling high-end virtualization systems designed to run mission-critical data is still an extremely tough proposition even for the likes of Sun -- and much more so for a startup (see Brocade Loads Code, Signs EMC, HP, IBM Make Virtual Motions, Cisco Takes Spinnaker for a Spin, and Pirus Ships Switch).

Sun has been rolling out the N1 Data Platform "as quickly as we could," says James Staten, director of marketing for storage software and data continuance for Sun. Initially, it's being offered through Sun's professional services arm. The starting list price is $112,600, which includes implementation and two-year warranty.

Sun may have better luck selling the new members of the StorEdge 6000 line. The 6120 uses an array tray system similar to the T3, but it increases the density from nine drives per tray to 14. The system starts at $24,300 for 292 Gbytes (four 73-Gbyte drives).The 6320, which starts at $67,600 for 500 Gbytes, provides up to 45 Tbytes of raw capacity in two cabinets. The system, which uses the same 14-drive tray as the 6120, is designed to compete primarily with EMC Corp.'s (NYSE: EMC) Clariion CX400 and, to a lesser extent, with the CX600 (see EMC Moves Downmarket With CX400 and EMC Revs Up Clariion).

Both of the new storage arrays include Sun's StorEdge Enterprise StorEdge Manager (ESM) 1.2, which provides SAN management and device configuration; StorEdge Availability Suite, which provides snapshot and distance replication; and StorEdge Traffic Manager, a load balancing and path failover application. Sun is also now offering StorEdge Backup Software 7.0, a rebranded version of Legato Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: LGTO) NetWorker 7.0.

Other new storage software from Sun includes Infinite Mailbox, a hierarchical storage management (HSM) application based on the company's SAM-FS file system. The software, priced at around $10,000 per Tbyte, sits under an email system to automatically archive messages based on a preset policy. Initially, Infinite Mailbox works only with Lotus Notes; Sun plans to release versions for Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Exchange, Sun Messaging Server, and Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) Email Server.

In addition to the 6000 series and storage software upgrades, Sun is announcing new services, including data continuance design and implementation and email management and archiving.

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch