Sun Microsystems plans to increase its focus on storage through a major internal reorganization, the company's chief executive has announced.
Writing on his blog on Monday, Jonathan Schwartz revealed the planned merger of Sun's server and storage teams into a converged systems team. The move, he wrote, would take advantage of Sun's existing "talent and assets" in its push into the ever-expanding storage market--a market set to be increasingly indistinguishable from the server world thanks to virtualization.
"The systems team will focus on the evolution and convergence of computing, storage and networking systems," Schwartz wrote. "Talk to any data-center administrator, and that's what they want to hear--they live in a world managing the (often idiosyncratic) interactions of that trinity (computing, storage and networking--and just wait until they're virtualized). We want to be in a position to innovate on their behalf, at the system level, beyond the boxes--across blades, racks, disk and tape."
Schwartz also reiterated Sun's enthusiasm for tape as a long-term storage medium: "In our view, the market for permanent data will only grow. Today, only tape can maintain the integrity of that data without electricity. And, for the data centers we serve, many are seeing the cost of electricity threatening to eclipse their hardware budgets (yes, I'm serious). For disk storage, over a decade, that's easy to see--just look at the power bill to run a SAN."
"Tape, with effective indexing and retrieval, represents the most economically responsible (that is, eco-responsible) archive platform for long-term storage. Broadly speaking, tape (and, in the future, other forms of removable media) are a core part of Sun's archive plans," Schwartz wrote.
Sun announced in August that it would lay off some of its workforce during the second half of this year. But it remains unclear how many job losses have already occurred and how many affect its server and storage teams.
One should ask Jonathan about the organizational move. Seems to me if Storage was really the focus that the VP of Systems (John Fowler) would be reporting to the VP of Storage (Jon Benson). In reality it's the other way around. This looks a lot more like Sun trying to find another place to sell things that include their processors and operating system.
The company didn't try hard enough to stop a 10-year incursion by hackers likely working from China, says a former Nortel exec cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Google creates an animated doodle that features a boy, a girl, Google's search engine, and a jump rope. But might there be darker, more analytical, more troubling interpretations to this tale?
When the sun goes down, that's when the iPad gets busy for folks with news readers. The iPhone? It's more of a daytime habit. If you're building an app for both devices, heed the lesson.
EnerG2 opens a plant to make an engineered carbon that will improve performance of energy storage devices and make storage for start-stop hybrid cars less expensive.
I'm just wondering if anyone at Sun talks to anyone else. This is painful.
me if Storage was really the focus that the VP of Systems (John
Fowler) would be reporting to the VP of Storage (Jon Benson). In
reality it's the other way around. This looks a lot more like Sun
trying to find another place to sell things that include their
processors and operating system.
Rarified stock price for sure.