Sun to Sell SPARC
Notebooks
Editor:-
June 27, 2005 - a story today on Yahoo news says that Sun Microsystems
will launch a SPARC notebook next month.
The article is
incorrect in stating that this would be Sun's first SPARC portable. Sun launched
a product called Voyager in the early 1990s, but it was heavier and much bigger
than the alternatives at the time and failed to achieve market success. Sun has
been reselling notebooks from several manufacturers in recent years.
Sun's
new Ultra 3
SPARC notebook line includes products which are supplied by two companies:-
Naturetech
and Tadpole.
The
notebook segment was one of the highest growth segments identified in our
article
the 2005 Market
Report on Sun Compatible OEMs
See also:-
SPARC Notebooks
...Later:-
(June 29, 2005) David Miles, Director of Marketing, Tadpole Computer, Inc
commented - "As the market leader in the USA and Europe for SPARC
notebooks, Tadpole is delighted to expand its market reach by providing Sun with
a series of custom notebooks. With 22 years experience in the UNIX market
Tadpole is an acknowledged leader in the manufacture of reliable mobile
solutions. In the US Military and Federal Government, Tadpole's SPARC notebooks
and mobile servers are highly regarded for their reliability and small form
factors, making them the mobility platform of choice. As an adjunct to Tadpole's
already successful Government business, Tadpole welcomes the opportunity to
expand its market into commercial opportunities under the Sun brand."
EMC Increases Support for Storage on Solaris 10
HOPKINTON,
Mass. - June 23, 2005 - EMC Corp and Sun Microsystems, Inc.
today announced they've reached an agreement on a number of hardware, software
and support initiatives designed to help customers more easily deploy their
technologies together.
The companies will work to ensure
compatibility between the EMC family of networked storage platforms and the
Solaris 10 Operating System. EMC also intends to port key storage management
software to Solaris 10 including EMC PowerPath and EMC Legato NetWorker, as well
as software from its EMC Documentum, EMC Legato and EMC Smarts product families.
Once these efforts are complete, EMC and Sun customers will be able to
cost-effectively manage, protect and share information, using EMC storage
systems and software with Solaris 10 OS on both SPARC and AMD Opteron x64
processor-based systems.
...EMC profile,
...Sun profile
Neterion Launches 10GbE VARs Program
Cupertino, CA - June
13, 2005 - Today Neterion Inc. announced that it is developing a
channel program for marketing and support of its family of 10 GbE Xframe
adapters. The program targets resellers whose customers include senior IT
management at major enterprise and government data centers.
Current
industry research indicates that these are markets poised for considerable
growth. According to analysts at IDC, 10 GbE LAN switch ports revenue grew at an
87% sequential rate between the third and the fourth quarter of 2004. Industry
research firm Gartner is forecasting that sales of 10 Gigabit Ethernet fiber
adapters will dramatically increase in the last quarter of 2005 and actually
surpass 1GbE fiber shipments by the first quarter of 2007. The 10 Gigabit
Ethernet ecosystem is already in place with all the leading switch, server,
storage and software vendors offering 10-GbE based products.
Channel partners will be able to leverage Neterion's leading
intellectual property as well as its strong OEM relationships. Neterion
customers include SGI, Cray, HP and Sun Microsystems. Later this year additional
server and storage OEMs will be announced. Neterion's strategy is 100%
channel-focused with no direct sales to end-user datacenter customers.
Currently, the overwhelming majority of Neterion's revenue comes through its OEM
relationships, but the company is projecting at least 50% of its sales will
originate from the channel within 18 months.
...Neterion profile
Death Knell Sounds for IBM's PowerPC
SAN
FRANCISCO - June 6, 2005 - At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple
announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh computers using Intel
microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to
using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007.
Apple previewed a
version of its Mac OS X Tiger, running on an Intel-based Mac to the over 3,800
developers attending CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address. Apple also announced the
availability of a Developer Transition Kit, consisting of an Intel-based Mac
development system along with preview versions of Apple's software, which will
allow developers to prepare versions of their applications which will run on
both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.
"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal
computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor
roadmap by far," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "It's been ten years
since our transition to the PowerPC, and we think Intel's technology will help
us create the best personal computers for the next ten years."
"We
plan to create future versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac that support both
PowerPC and Intel processors," said Roz Ho, general manager of Microsoft's
Macintosh Business Unit.
...Apple profile,
...Intel profile
Editor's
comments:- In the past Apple has often made ill judged decisions about its
processors which have held it back from its potential. Apple's first high volume
desktop in 1976 - the Apple II used an 8 bit micro from Rockwell called the
6502. That was a dead end. Apple's second choice of micro family - the 68000
series from Motorola ran out of steam when Motorola failed to react to the
opportunities created by the new RISC processors like
SPARC and MIPS
in the late 1980s. Although the 680X0 family struggled on till the early 1990s
- it was already a product without a future roadmap. Apple dumped Motorola and
tied up with IBM to use IBM's late to market PowerPC RISC chip - and this has
been the chip family inside the Mac for the past decade. But recent server
benchmarks show that SPARC outruns PowerPC, and Intel Architecture processors
from AMD outrun SPARC.
Apple's switch to Intel Architecture will help
the company open up new competitive markets, and by the way marks the death
knell for IBM's PowerPC. Without the high volume uptake from Apple, the
economics of new PowerPC design iterations will get more expensive and stretch
out over longer market cycles - eventually making the family completely
unattractive.
Sun Acquires StorageTek
SANTA
CLARA, CALIF. and LOUISVILLE, COLO. - June 2, 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc.
and StorageTek today announced that they have entered into a definitive
agreement under which Sun will acquire StorageTek.
The combination
will create a new global leader in comprehensive network computing and data
management which collectively had total annual revenues of more than $13 billion
in the past four quarters. Following completion of the proposed transaction,
which is expected to occur in late Summer/early Fall 2005, StorageTek will
become fully integrated within Sun's organization. In the interim, a joint team
with representatives of both companies will develop integration plans that build
upon the technological, product and cultural synergies and the best business and
product development practices of both companies.
...Sun profile,
...StorageTek profile
Editor's
comments:- in recent articles I have shown how Sun's storage strategy has
changed and I predicted that storage and related services could replace SPARC
servers to become the biggest and fastest growing part of its overall revenue.
Over half StorageTek's revenue comes from services and this acquisition fills a
big gap in Sun's storage resources and credibility.
See also:-
article:- the 2005
Market Report on Sun Compatible OEMs,
article:- Sun, SPARC
and Solaris Highlights and Lowlights in 2004.
Arkeia Data Protection Solutions Certified on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 4
CARLSBAD,
Calif. - June 1, 2005 Arkeia Corporation today announced Red
Hat Ready certification of its flagship enterprise network backup software
which now supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 environments for x86 platforms.
Arkeia continues to maintain its position as the first professional
network backup solution fully capable of protecting Linux environments of
virtually all configurations. It offers the widest coverage in terms of
architecture, including x86, Itanium-2, AMD Opteron, PowerPC, SPARC,
Alpha, and appliances such as Sun Cobalt and SGI Altix servers. Arkeia
supports a broad range of other operating systems, including Windows, Unix, Mac
OS X, NetWare and xBSD.
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux has become a standard enterprise
computing platform for Arkeia's customers," said Frederic Renard, director
of marketing and alliances for Arkeia. "Our alignment with Red Hat through
the Red Hat Ready program has been a collaborative, cost-effective method for
getting our Linux applications to market as rapidly as possible."
...Arkeia profile |
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Sun to Launch
SPARC Notebook?
EMC Increases Support for Storage on Solaris 10
Neterion
Launches 10GbE VARs Program
Death Knell Sounds for IBM's PowerPC
Sun Acquires StorageTek
Arkeia Certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
earlier news -
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Themis Computer
is a solutions oriented
OEM supplier of Single Board Computers
and
Systems based on Sun Microsystems
UltraSPARC technology. |
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3rd Party
RAM, Your Rights on Server Warranties - article by Keystone Memory
Users
know that
memory and
hard disk drives aren't
made by most of the companies from whom they buy their servers, notebooks and
desktops. But they are often intimidated from competitively buying 3rd party
upgrades by sales tactics aimed at locking them in to a single source. Such
tactics often hint that maintenance contracts and warranties will be void or
negatively impacted by the presence of 3rd party upgrade products.
That
kind of anti competitive pressure is illegal in many countries.
This
article provides an overview of the legal protection that users may have
under a US law called Magnuson and Moss. ...read the article,
...Keystone Memory
profile, US Storage
VARs | |
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Serial Attached SCSI - Delivering Flexibility to the
Data Center - article by LSI Logic and Maxtor
"SAS gains a
performance advantage through its support of multiple initiators, or the ability
to support I/O requests from more than one controller at a time. With dual ports
and multiple initiator support, SAS RAID arrays can implement dynamic load
balancing, allowing I/O requests to be evenly spread across multiple
controllers, leveraging the full processing power of all of them. Without this
capability, the I/O requests can become skewed, and overload one controller,
while the others may not be at full capacity. SATA technology does not
support this capability."
...read the article,
...LSI Logic profile,
...Maxtor profile,
Serial Attached SCSI | |
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Learn How
to Trust Your Storage Drives - article by the Trusted Computing Group
H
ow much can you trust the security of data on your storage drives?
Snugly nestling in a RAID
system in your datacenter - maybe. Now what about when those self same
drives are in some one else's mitts - because they've been replaced, sold or
stolen?
The Trusted Computing Group has been working with
storage manufacturers
and other industry trade bodies
to create a standard model and framework for extending security into the storage
drive - using extensions of the
SCSI and ATA command sets
- and by extending the features originally designed for internal error logging.
Although at an early stage, readers may be interested in reading and commenting
(to TCG) on the draft document - which is published here as part of their
market liaison exercise. ...read the article,
...Trusted Computing Group
profile, Storage
Security, disk
sanitizers | | |
