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Few companies have had as difficult a recovery from the technology bust as Sun Microsystems Inc., but today it will launch a product it hopes will bring a new way of computing to businesses.
Sun will unveil in San Francisco what it calls the next step in
computer data centres. The company says its new Blackbox product --
literally a shipping container loaded with between 120 and 250 of Sun's
fastest servers -- is more energy efficient and easier to deploy than
any other data centre to date.
Few companies have had as difficult a recovery from the technology bust as Sun Microsystems Inc., but today it will launch a product it hopes will bring a new way of computing to businesses.
Sun will unveil in San Francisco what it calls the next step in
computer data centres. The company says its new Blackbox product --
literally a shipping container loaded with between 120 and 250 of Sun's
fastest servers -- is more energy efficient and easier to deploy than
any other data centre to date.
The occasion marks a significant turnaround for the company. Sun's
fall from grace and its recovery have been more public than most other
victims of the technology bust in 2001. It wasn't just that it had the
misfortune to make an untimely claim of being "the dot in dot-com." Or
that its brazen, outspoken founder and former chief executive officer,
Scott McNealy, had presented his firm as the saviour to a world held
hostage by Microsoft Corp.
Sun's biggest problem was that too many of the customers for its
powerful computer servers and software were the Internet startups and
telecommunications companies most bloodied by the sector's collapse.
In April, Jonathan Schwartz, a former software engineer with 10 years
under his belt at Sun, succeeded Mr. McNealy as CEO. Today, 140 days
into the role, Mr. Schwartz says the company is back on track after
revamping its research and development strategy, restructuring
operations and establishing a realistic course back to profitability.
"The technical reputation of the company has certainly been restored.
Now, we're very much focused on the financial reputation," he said in a
phone interview yesterday from Santa Clara, Calif.
The company maintains its long-held vision that computer networks
will continue to grow in importance, running everything from banks and
telecoms to disaster-relief efforts around the world. One way Sun is
trying to differentiate itself from competitors is with products that
are less expensive to deploy and operate.
"The technology itself has really become a social utility and what
we are doing is continuing to work on the economics of that underlying
technology to make that utility accessible to an ever-broadening
population," Mr. Schwartz said.
The new product grew out of the requests a few years ago from
customers who were complaining that the space required to house servers
and the high energy costs of running them were impeding the growth of
their businesses. At the same time, some of the largest users of
servers, such as financial institutions, have complained that it can
take several years to build a new data centre. "Instead of building a
computer that fits optimally into a data centre, we asked, 'How do we
fit a data centre around an optimally designed computer?'" Mr. Schwartz
said.
The company claims its Sun Fire servers are three to five times more
energy efficient than some rival systems, and take up less space. Sun
also says its Solaris operating system runs computers more efficiently
than other platforms.
The Blackbox containers will help customers reduce their costs by
saving space and putting the servers in locations that make more
economic sense. For an oil and gas company, that might be on an
offshore rig; for the military, it might be in the theatre of war; and
for a retailer, it might be in a region that has alternative energy
sources or cheaper electricity rates.
The product, which Sun hasn't priced yet, is due out by the middle of next year.
So far, Sun's efforts to find new customers by offering them ways to
save money has produced market-share gains. In the second quarter, the
company saw its revenue from server sales jump 15.5 per cent to
$1.58-billion (U.S.). Sun took third place in the market from Dell Inc., winning a 12.9 per cent share. International Business Machines Corp. held on to top spot with 31 per cent of the market, followed by Hewlett-Packard Co. with 27.8 per cent, according to the research firm IDC.
Some analysts, such as Benjamin Reitzes of UBS Securities LLC, say
Sun has become a turnaround story. Investors have sent the share price
up by more than one-third since Mr. Schwartz took command.
Read the original article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061017.IBSUN17/TPStory/Business
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