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Sun, SPARC, Solaris news - 2003, January weeks 1 - 2

See also:- article:- the Top #10 SPARC Systems Companies
article:- Everyone's bashing Sun. So will SPARC survive?

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SBS Technologies
. "Our new Gigabit Ethernet PMCs meet the growing demands of both the commercial and government markets for cost-effective industry standard, high-performance I/O. Using a single MAC/PHY chip design enhances performance by reducing the number of PCI-to-PCI bridges and components on the cards, as well as allowing us to produce a card that is conduction cooled friendly," said Clarence Peckham, President of SBS Technologies' Commercial and Government Group.
 SBS Technologies Strengthens its Gigabit Ethernet Family with Eight New PCI-X PMCs

Albuquerque, NM - January 14, 2003 - SBS Technologies today strengthened its Gigabit Ethernet product line by introducing eight PMCs built with single chip architecture. Designed to provide full functionality while reducing the number of chips and components required, SBS' new PMCs offer a significantly improved price/performance ratio over multi-chip Gigabit Ethernet PMCs.

All eight Gigabit Ethernet cards are single-wide 32/64-bit 33/66 MHz PCI, 66/133 MHz PCI-X PMCs with front panel I/O access, auto-negotiating protocol selection, and support for Jumbo frames. Transmit and receive FIFOs, 64KB total per port, allow back-to-back transmissions with minimal interface latency.

All components and traces avoid the board area that would be used for a stiffener bar, making the PMCs compatible with ruggedized and conduction cooled CPUs. Drivers for VxWorks, Linux, and Windows NT/2000 are available. Pricing starts at $300. ...SBS Technologies profile
SBS Technologies Strengthens its Gigabit Ethernet Family with Eight New PCI-X PMCs

Primagraphics launches new generation of COTS primary radar tracking and distribution systems

Continuous Computing Corporation Acquires the Trillium® Portable Software Assets of Trillium Digital Systems, Inc., an Intel Company

Have You Got Sun's Message about Making Web Messaging More Reliable?

Sun Named One of Fortune Magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For"

CompactTCA - the New Telecom Computing Architecture Initiative

Dot Hill Estimates Revenue Grew 75% Sequentially in Q4

NetVault Serves as Best Backup for UK I.S.P.

earlier news - archive
fibre channel
Fibre-channel adapter cards
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Megabyte found that Fibre-channel was a really quick way of getting around.

View from the Hill:-

Why Sun's Fortunes will Look a Lot Brighter in 2003

I'm starting the New Year with a more positive outlook on the prospects for Sun's SPARC server business. Methinks that Sun's revenue will grow and that Sun is going to look smarter than its main competitors (again).

No. It's not because I've found my white hairs turning back to grey. And I haven't been eating mouldy old Christmas cake (which can cause hallucinations) either. Here are my good solid reasons:-

  • Sun's over dependence on ephemeral dotcom companies is now ancient history.

    The customers they've got now are the same solid organizations in government, banking, manufacturing and research which they had before the dotcom bubble. Their surviving telco and ISP customers are the ones which made it with solid business plans. You're only as good as your customers. Sun's customers are great companies. They have real problems with increasing server demands, security risks, and reliability etc which SPARC systems can solve quite well at a scalable price.
  • Sun's rivals are going to falter in their transition to 64 bit computing.

    Sun's had its own fair share of trouble in recent years trying to get more performance out of its 64 bit servers. It seemed like every last drop had been squeezed out. But Sun had the advantage that they've been doing this 64 bit OS stuff since 1996. They don't have to solve every problem at once.

    Sun's rivals in the Wintel camp face the double whammy of trying to optimise everything at the same time with a newish 64 bit platform. It takes some time to optimise all those software tweaks and balances, and they're going to stumble and look pretty foolish while they do it. Some Intel server companies are not going to succeed, and will withdraw from the 64 bit race going back to safer proven 32 bit server solutions. That will just increase confidence in the company which has been doing it the longest. My guess is that Sun will introduce strategic 32 bit (external bus) SPARC appliance processors to help out with those parts where high megahertz does best. 2003 will be the long awaited year that SPARC servers leapfrog the competition again. Not all the solutions will come from Sun. Their partners will provide critical building blocks.
  • HP's transient problems in absorbing Compaq (which were blamed for their slowdown in business performance in 2002) will be called something different as they take on a veneer of permanence in 2003.

    Let's just call it "HP Stodge". Unlike HP Sauce (the #1 ketchup in the UK) which has a rich brown color, and is full of flavor and goodness, HP Stodge is something which is gray, sticky and makes your wheels spin more slowly.You can't run a company that size and which consists of business units which are mostly #2 or #3 in their respective niches and expect to get first class results. Integrating a company is no different to integrating a computer system. You need best of breed components to build a best of breed system. A lot of HP's business units are followers rather than leaders.
  • InfiniBand is a disruptive server technology and just what the company doctor prescribed.

    Sun's got a good track record of inventing, borrowing and running with new ideas in server I/O connection technology. In the past it did a good job with SCSI, then SBus (which gave Sun a lead of several years over PC makers until PCI came along to do the same job) and Fibre-channel. This year Sun will hype and race ahead with InfiniBand. Sun didn't invent it. But Sun stands to gain the most from promoting high performance servers at a low price, particularly if the low cost part is a 3rd party add-on and doesn't affect the profit margin in Sun's part of the System. Once the hype machine gets into play, you too will believe that an InfiniBand server from Sun will be a safer choice, and that you'll get it working faster than a similar server from everyone else.
Just keep your browser tuned to these pages and you'll see how well these story lines play out.
Texas Memory Systems
Texas Memory Systems, Inc., founded in 1978, manufactures the RAM-SAN family of solid state disks for storage networks:- "the World's Fastest Storage".

SPARC manufacturers

Sun SPARC resellers - USA

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SBus, PCI & cPCI cards

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Rackmount SPARC

Primagraphics Primagraphics launches new generation of COTS primary radar tracking and distribution systems

CAMBRIDGE, UK - January 14, 2003 - Primagraphics has launched its RVP (Radar Video Processor) family, a new generation of high performance radar acquisition, tracking and distribution servers in PCI and VME form factors. The RVP family is designed to provide a flexible, modular, cost-effective COTS solution to a number of demanding applications including specialist air traffic control, aircraft ground movement, coastal surveillance and naval tracking systems.

RVP has at its core a set of integrated software modules, which work on industry-standard operating systems and computing platforms to ensure that systems can be upgraded and maintained over their operating life. These modules provide radar video acquisition, clutter processing, cell averaging CFAR (constant false alarm rate), detection radar video distribution on a LAN, radar video recording on a local disk, plot extraction, automatic target acquisition, target tracking, radar video plan position indicator display engineering and control interface, and network control. ...Primagraphics profile
Continuous Computing

Trillium Digital Systems
. "Like Continuous Computing, Trillium is a world renowned leader with network equipment providers," said Ken Kalb, CEO, Continuous Computing. "The Trillium software base supports millions of active users. Our technology complements and enhances this source code model. Combined, CCPU and Trillium will help customers get their applications to market quickly and cost effectively on their choice of open architectures."
 Continuous Computing Corporation Acquires the Trillium® Portable Software Assets of Trillium Digital Systems, Inc., an Intel Company

SAN DIEGO, Calif. - January 13, 2003 - Continuous Computing Corporation (CCPU) today announced an agreement to acquire the Trillium® branded portable software products and certain associated intellectual property rights from Trillium Digital Systems, Inc., an Intel company.

The asset purchase includes the Trillium protocol stacks for the IP telephony, wireless, broadband and signaling markets utilizing industry-leading Trillium Advanced Portable Architecture (TAPA®). The asset purchase will enable CCPU to deliver source code, bundled software and hardware, and complete turnkey central office systems for network equipment providers. Financial terms were not disclosed. The asset purchase builds upon CCPU's strategy of providing every element of a highavailability, application-ready platform solution for network equipment providers. CCPU's award-winning boards, systems and high-availability middleware products will be enhanced with the complete suite of Trillium protocols such as H.323, MGCP, SIP, GPRS, IMT-2000, SS7 and SIGTRAN.

As part of the agreement, CCPU will hire some of Intel's Los Angeles-based engineers and members of its worldwide sales and support organization. Current Trillium software customers will be supported by CCPU after the deal closes.

CCPU will maintain the Trillium business model of licensing source code and providing maintenance and support to customers. CCPU will augment this model by providing integrated stack solutions on open system platforms to enable the delivery of signaling gateways, wireless nodes and IP telephony appliances. These application-ready products will help reduce costs and allow customers to improve time-to-market at aggressive price points. ...Continuous Computing profile
Sun Microsystems
. Reliable message delivery means the ability to ensure delivery of a message with the desired level of quality of service. Some examples of this quality of service level for message delivery are:
  • Message sent at least once (guaranteed delivery)
  • Message sent at most once (guaranteed duplicate elimination)
  • Message sent exactly once (guaranteed delivery and duplicate elimination)
 Have You Got Sun's Message about Making Web Messaging More Reliable?

January 9, 2003 - A group of leading IT vendors, consisting of Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, Ltd., NEC Corp, Oracle Corp., Sonic Software, and Sun Microsystems, today announced the publication of the Web Services Reliability (WS-Reliability) specification working draft.

By providing a fundamentally more reliable transport infrastructure, WS-Reliability will help accelerate adoption of Web services, making them relevant for an even wider range of enterprise application and integration challenges. WS-Reliability is a specification for open, reliable Web services messaging-including guaranteed delivery, duplicate message elimination and message ordering-enabling reliable communication between Web services.

The reliability features are based on extensions to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), rather than being tied to the underlying transport protocol. The specification will allow a variety of systems to interoperate reliably in a platform- and vendor-neutral manner. Following collaboration on the specification draft, the companies plan to submit WS-Reliability to a standards body on a royalty-free basis. ...Sun Microsystems profile

Edittooorrrrs comments:- yes, we know that it can be irritating when you get two identical confirmations for your web order, and you're wondering if your card will be billed twice.
Sun Microsystems Sun Named One of Fortune Magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For"

Editor:- January 8, 2003 - Sun was named this week in the annual Fortune magazine survey of the "100 Best US Companies to Work For". Sun is ranked #77. ...FORTUNE article, ...Sun Microsystems profile
Force Computers

Motorola

Performance Technologies
. "With the similarities between CompactTCA and AdvancedTCA, the two system architectures in principal are software compatible, which allows designers to use either for future systems," said Chris Williams, vice president and general manager of Worldwide Strategic/Product Marketing and Engineering of Force Computers. "With CompactTCA focusing on Ethernet as the backplane communication instead of the PCI bus, provisioning of high availability systems is greatly facilitated with respect to hot-swap, signal integrity and corresponding software support."

"Backward compatibility to CompactPCI/PICMG 2.16 is key to the success of CompactTCA," said Jeff Rhodes, business manager of Motorola Computer Group. "The telecommunication industry has already adopted these standards and a wide variety of compatible products exist from multiple vendors."
 CompactTCA - the New Telecom Computing Architecture Initiative

FREMONT, Calif. – January 8, 2003 – Force Computers and a group of industry-leading communications platform and component providers announced today an initiative called Compact Telecommunications Computing Architecture, or "CompactTCA." The objective of the proposal is to clearly define an embedded system platform specification, which combines several existing CompactPCI® specifications from the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG®) into a single standard.

Sponsor companies for the CompactTCA initiative include Force Computers, Motorola Computer Group, Performance Technologies, Pigeon Point Systems, StarGen and ZNYX Networks. The group expects to propose CompactTCA as a formal PICMG activity in early Q1 2003.

The key element of the CompactTCA specification is that it retains compatibility with most existing CompactPCI/PICMG 2.16 products. CompactTCA ultimately combines several CompactPCI specifications into a single standard, ensuring interoperability and the high availability and scalability attributes of packet-switched technology in the proven, lower cost CompactPCI/PICMG 2.16 form factor. The proposed CompactTCA architecture complements AdvancedTCA by featuring PICMG 2.16 packet switching as the primary interconnect, mandatory system management, and elimination of the PCI bus for data transfer. The group will propose several enhancements that maintain backward compatibility with existing CompactPCI/PICMG 2.16 products. Developers will choose CompactTCA or AdvancedTCA based on application requirements, and leverage common features to migrate applications between the two platform standards. In addition, the CompactTCA specification will permit the use of optional auxiliary data interconnects compliant with PICMG 2.5, PICMG 2.17 and PICMG 2.20. Concurrent use of PICMG 2.15-compliant PMCs and PMC carriers will also be supported as an option. ...Force Computers profile
Dot Hill

Sun		 Dot Hill Estimates Revenue Grew 75% Sequentially in Q4

CARLSBAD, Calif. – January 7, 2003 – Dot Hill Systems Corp. (AMEX:HIL), today announced it has narrowed the range of its earlier fourth quarter 2002 revenue guidance of $10 million to $20 million, and expects revenue to be between $15.5 and $16.5 million (75% up on the previous quarter).

Annual 2002 revenues are estimated to be between $46 and $47 million. In the fourth quarter 2002, Dot Hill will take a charge in the range of $3.5 to $4.5 million related to excess inventory of the SANnet I product line along with excess and unused facilities. Combining these charges with up-front costs associated with Solectron's ramping up the first of four anticipated products, Dot Hill estimates fourth quarter losses in the range of $0.45 to $0.55 per share. Dot Hill paid off its U.S. line of credit and its available cash balances as of December 31, 2002 are estimated to be between $11 and $12 million. Dot Hill's guidance for 2003 is total year revenue targeted at $153 million ...Dot Hill profile

Editor's comments:- if Dot Hill were to announce a "reseller of the year award", it would surely have to go to Sun Microsystems, which has been a big factor in this growth. (Sun resells a LOT of Dot Hill's rackmount storage.) However, that award is unlikely to happen, because Scott McNealy hates the idea of Sun being called a VAR. When McNealy was really trying hard to say something rude about Dell in a Red Herring interview in May last year, he is reported to have called them "a reseller for Intel and Microsoft".
BakBone Software
. "The installation at Server City demonstrates our continued promise to support an extensive range of operating systems and appliances, including Linux and Sun Cobalt servers, whilst maintaining our key ease-of-use advantage," comments Andrew Unsworth, Managing Director EMEA, BakBone Software. "More and more customers are discovering the true power of NetVault as a heterogeneous enterprise backup software solution which does not compromise simplicity for functionality."
NetVault Serves as Best Backup for UK I.S.P.

POOLE, UK - January 2, 2003 - BakBone Software announced today that UK Internet Service Provider, Server City, has installed NetVault to ensure reliable backup and recovery of data at their site in London, UK. Providing virtual web hosting services to thousands of clients throughout the UK, Server City has invested heavily in data backup in order to minimise downtime for their clients' web services running across Windows 2000 and Sun Cobalt RaQ4 server appliances.

David Graham, Customer Services Director at Server City cites the ease of implementation as the key advantage of NetVault. "It was all very painless and quick. It is a flexible software solution, reliable and it has enabled our organisation to meet the ever-growing need to provide a secure backup service not only to ourselves – but more importantly to our clients. We are now able to back up core DNS servers and websites that run on Linux and Windows, which are then rented to our clients."...BakBone Software profile

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