Sun Microsystems to Unveil New Software for Servers
Sun Microsystems Inc. is set to release today its first software for managing the assignments of multiple computer servers, an important initial step in the sagging hardware firm’s effort to change directions.
The software is the first fruit of a year-old strategy to establish a family of programs and services that Sun calls N1. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun hopes that eventually large companies will use N1 to allocate a host of technical resources -- from data storage capability to processing power to determining where within the network individual programs are running -- through a single control panel on a computer screen.
Today’s modest release allows customers to configure some characteristics of a new line of relatively inexpensive “blade” servers. For example, customers can designate which servers should inherit tasks when another server fails or when usage increases, and they can set up virtual private networks among the servers, according to Giga Information Group analyst Richard Fichera.
But the release and an expected pilot-customer endorsement from Cingular Wireless should help Sun claim leadership in the emerging field over Hewlett-Packard Co., Fichera said. He noted that HP has a similar effort aimed at higher-end computing systems, but it has yet to name a customer that will vouch for the product, which costs $2 million or more. A Sun spokesman said a blade system, including N1 software, would be available starting at $27,000.
Sun earns most of its money selling expensive servers that run on its own Sparc microprocessors and its Solaris operating system. But Sun is being squeezed on both ends. Rival big-machine makers IBM Corp. and HP have been pushing the free operating system Linux as an alternative on costly equipment, and Microsoft Corp. has pushed its own systems for cheaper computers using chips from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Visible N1 products are crucial for Sun as it looks to establish momentum in any area. Sun’s revenue and stock price were crushed by the dot-com and telecom collapses and by general corporate cutbacks in technology spending. Sun shares, which fell 17 cents Friday to $3.07, have lost two-thirds of their value in the last 12 months.
“We see N1 as the vision and architecture, and finally as a series of products for customers to look at new ways of designing the data center,” said Yael Zheng, Sun’s N1 senior director. A version of N1 software for such data centers, the largest computer systems, will come out later in the year, Zheng said.
To help control the damage from Linux, Sun announced Friday a new release of Solaris that will run on Intel and AMD machines for as little as $20. It has started shipping Linux on Sun machines as well.
The most important strategy is Sun’s bid to recapture its position as a software innovator, a position it enjoyed in the late 1990s for its authorship of the Java programming language.
“They will have to try very hard to show people that this isn’t a company with its best days behind it,” said Vice President Jean Bozman of IDC, an industry research firm. In the current environment, it may help that Sun is releasing new products with better software at the low end of the market.
“Business conditions have changed, buying patterns have changed, and Sun has to get more revenue out of where there’s interest,” Bozman said. Neither she nor Fichera own stock in Sun; both of their firms have Sun as a client.
