Sun Microsystems has spent years getting bludgeoned by commodity hardware and software. Now it's planning to apply those painful lessons to its competitors in the storage industry, as highlighted by The New York Times reporter Ashlee Vance:
In the early part of this decade, Sun learned all too well just how disruptive ("good enough" technology at a significant discount) can be. Customers moved away from products built on Sun's own custom microprocessors and software to cheaper servers that relied on Intel processors and the open-source Linux operating system. While larger customers still wanted Sun's high-end hardware for some tasks, the Intel-and-Linux combination could satisfy the majority of most customers' needs.
Software plays a large role in any discussion of this type, and again Sun thinks it has something that can rattle NetApp and EMC.
Sun spent years fighting this trend toward "good enough at a great price," but now it's wielding the weapon of open-source software and commodity hardware (as well as its not-so-commodity hardware). It seems to be working. The Register reports that Sun grew its market share in the external disk storage market faster than any other vendor in the second quarter of 2008 at 34.7 percent to NetApp's 22.9 percent growth.
The key for Sun will be to sustain this growth. It won't be an easy task, but customers should be cheering as Sun lowers the cost of storage and improves choice and flexibility through open source. NetApp may not like it, but then, Sun didn't like getting beaten up for its former proprietary intransigence, either. Sun learned its lesson. Will NetApp also learn?
I received this update from Sun Microsystems on Tuesday on the ongoing ZFS patent litigation with NetApp. While colored by its source, the news seems positive for Sun (and, given the importance of ZFS, for the open-source development community). Sun has succeeded in getting the venue changed to California and it appears that its public request for examples of prior art have yielded fruit.
What follows was sent to me by Sun:
As of Friday, December 14, Sun has filed reexamination requests for three Network Appliance patents as part of its response to a lawsuit initially filed by Network Appliance against Sun on September 5, 2007. This follows the agreement last month with Network Appliance to transfer Network Appliance's lawsuit from Texas and litigate it along with the case Sun filed in California. The motion to transfer was filed on November 21 and the cases are now assigned to a mutually agreed upon judge. With each company being headquartered in northern California and the majority of inventors and innovation in dispute originating in California, it makes sense for this case to be litigated in this jurisdiction. We are pleased that Network Appliance agreed to Sun's request and retracted its imprudent choice of venue for this litigation.
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Network Appliance's latest earnings report is fascinating. Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp's CEO, reported that enterprise spending is on the wane, with the financial services industry allegedly battening down the hatches and sitting out a soft economy.
If true, I suppose this is bad news for NetApp and many other enterprise IT companies (though it doesn't seem to have made a dent in Microsoft or Oracle). For open-source companies? It's manna from heaven. $1 saved on proprietary, pricey IT may well convert into $.50 spent on open-source software...which goes a long way for the new breed of open-source vendors.
But first, Mr. Warmenhoven's commentary:
(The enterprise spending weakness) is led by the financial services sector as you might imagine and they're quite substantial. But other companies are still as well....It was a challenge this year.
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Ashlee Vance of The Register has a great piece on the ongoing patent feud between Sun and NetApp over Sun's/NetApp's ZFS technology. In this war of words, Sun's Schwartz gets to take the moral high ground:
The simple reality that [NetApp founder Dave] Hitz needs to face here is that Schwartz, who is very talented in the art of rhetoric (sometimes to a fault), has more persuasive material to work with in the court of public opinion. No matter how hard it tries, NetApp comes off as a seller of high-priced storage gear doing everything it can to keep selling high-priced gear in the face of a disruptive technology....
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Stephen Shankland reports that Sun plans to countersue NetApp over ZFS, but that Apple's Leopard won't get caught in the crossfire:
"Apple is including ZFS in their upcoming Leopard OS X release. This is happening without any payment to Sun," [Sun CEO Jonathan] Schwartz said. "Under the license, we've waived all rights to sue them for any of the patents or copyright associated with ZFS. We've let Apple know we will use our patent portfolio to protect them and the Mac ZFS community from NetApp--with or without a commercial relationship to Sun."
There's a breath of fresh air. Threatening to protect customers rather than to sue them. Perhaps Microsoft should take a cue.
According to Computerworld, Apple's reported support for ZFS in its upcoming Leopard release may enmesh it in NetApp's legal catfight with Sun:
Apple Inc.'s upcoming Leopard will support the open-source ZFS file system, the company confirmed today -- a move that could embroil it in a patent-infringement lawsuit between Sun Microsystems and storage software maker Net[work] Appliance.
Leopard, also known as Mac OS X 10.5, will include ZFS (Zettabyte File System), albeit in a small way. "Apple will provide limited ZFS support in Leopard," said company spokesman Anuj Nayar today. "It will only be available as a read-only option from the command line."
This, however, is allegedly only the tip of the iceberg of Apple's adoption of ZFS, making the outcome of NetApp's lawsuit important to more than just Sun.
... Read moreWe just keep going further down the rabbit hole, and the lawyers haven't even started discussions yet. I'm referring, of course, to NetApp's patent infringement lawsuit against Sun, which Sun has dismissed as "factually incorrect" and, interestingly, driven by fear of open source. ZDNet posted this from Sun:
NetApp's legal attack against Sun's open source ZFS solution which is freely available in the marketplace is a clear indication that NetApp considers Sun technology a threat, and is a direct attack on the open source community. ... Read more
It's fascinating to see how blogs are being used these days.
On Wednesday, Dave Hitz, co-founder of NetApp, used his blog to explicate the company's reasons for suing Sun Microsystems over ZFS patent infringement. On Thursday, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, fired back using his own blog, telling a very different story from Hitz's.
And, when I asked NetApp to respond to why it had chosen to respond to Sun now, rather than when Sun announced it was open-sourcing ZFS, Hitz replied...in a comment to my blog.
This is a very new world we live in. It's also one that Schwartz is convinced open source will win, as he suggests (in his blog):
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