Sun's big potential in storage

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
10/11/05
Today's focus: Sun's big potential in storage

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Sun-StorageTek: Lots of potential to provide value to
customers
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Sun's big potential in storage

By Mike Karp

Sun's acquisition of StorageTek
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage2408> in June is still in
its early days, and by no means has the dust begun to settle.
And yet, a few things are becoming clear.

Most obviously, Sun's position in the marketplace relative to
the other storage companies will undergo a significant shift.
Why? Because the company's product portfolio now consists of
existing Sun systems products, the Solaris operating system, the
pre-existing Sun disk storage (for the most part this means the
3000- 6000- and 9000-series arrays, and the 5000-series
network-attached storage line), and the tape and other product
lines that Sun gets from the StorageTek deal. Putting all this
together offers potential for Sun to experience a significant
transformation.

Sun has always been a systems house that also did storage, but
the technology that it will get from StorageTek (and
importantly, the storage sales team) makes the company's
position more akin to those of IBM and HP - which is to say,
companies that do storage seriously, but which are equally
serious about doing other things.

Of course, it is not nearly enough just to do several things -
the trick is to do several things well. If you are an admin at a
smaller site, it may be sufficient for Sun to do each of these
things well, but separately. You may be happy with its liability
to just manage systems, or just manage storage. If you have
responsibilities for more complex sites however, or for sites
that may be remote from one another, it will be important not
only that Sun does these things well, but that it does them well
in concert with one another.

This is the difference between putting a group of 1-year-old
children together in a playpen, and putting together a group of
4-year-olds. In the first instance, they may play together well,
but are likely to play seperately from one another. The
4-year-olds will play together and, for better or worse, will
interact with one another.

Vendors that can look across storage, systems, networks,
security, and any other IT elements that you may be managing
have much to offer, not the least of which is the chance to
manage IT as a single system rather than as an aggregate of a
number of systems. There are many reasons for this, the most
obvious being that no one can manage any complex environment
without being able to monitor and analyze each piece of that
environment. Lacking that, for instance, how would anyone know
where the cause of a problem lies if the problem potentially
touches both systems and networks, or networks and storage?

Sun cannot integrate much of this management right now, and even
if it can get all its present set of ducks in a row, it still
admits to having no ability to look across optical networks to
understand the events occurring on remote parts of the data
path. On the other hand, nobody else can do this either; in
fact, as of this writing nobody even comes close.

As we say, these are still early days for Sun. It may take a
couple of years for the company to put together management
systems that interact. But our expectation for this should be
much better than four years.

It will be interesting to see what Sun shows at Storage
Networking World in Orlando at the end of this month. I'll make
sure to take a good look. More on Sun next time.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine has serious bug
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert8494>
2. How to solve Windows system crashes in minutes
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert7669>
3. IETF effort promises fewer net failures
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert8495>
4. Nortel's uphill battle
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage8128nlstoragealert8496>
5. You won't find this book on Oprah's list
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert8497>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Mike Karp

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the
methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He
has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and
telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter sponsored by ONStor

FREE GARTNER REPORT
"Server Consolidation Is Still a Major Goal but Not Just for
Cost Cutting." Nearly 90% of IT leaders are implementing or
considering server consolidation projects. See why with this
exclusive Gartner Report. It's brought to you compliments of
ONStor, the leading provider of open NAS Gateways that enable
you to consolidate literally hundreds of Windows servers - and
to leverage your existing storage without vendor lock-in.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=116538
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Storage newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/stor/index.html

Breaking storage news and analysis:
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/storage.html
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE

IT PROS SHARE THEIR TALES OF MAKING ITIL WORK

Running an enterprise network is challenging. IT organizational
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proportionally across people, process and technology.
Implementing best practices frameworks such as Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can help, but they
introduce their own set of challenges. Click here for more:

<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/092205-itil.html>
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