Sun springs for software maker

Sun Microsystems on Friday said it will acquire software developer Terraspring to further its efforts to create increasingly autonomous computers for businesses.

Sun will add the Fremont, Calif.-based software maker's products, which automate the management and control of data centers, to its N1 portfolio.

N1 is a Sun initiative to create products that can automate tasks performed by its computers. It?s an attempt to turn data centers, which group large numbers of servers with networking features and data storage, from simply a giant cluster of hardware into an organism that automatically adjusts to meet changing computing demands.

IBM has a similar plan, known as eLiza, to build autonomic computers that can anticipate and recover from problems without human intervention.

Sun is already selling Change Manager software under the N1 banner that allows administrators to simultaneously update a large group of servers.

But the addition of Terraspring software promises to put even more capabilities in the N1 software, the company said in a statement.

"By integrating Terraspring's software into our existing N1 foundation technologies, we're helping our customers take the first step to implementing an N1 architecture, simplifying the complexity of managing their data centers," Steve MacKay, vice president of N1 and management systems at Sun, said in a statement.

Sun will buy Terraspring in a cash-for-stock transaction. Terms were not disclosed.