Sun stays focused on products, not acquisition talks
There was a funny moment inside a briefing room on Sun Microsystems' Silicon Valley campus this week. Just as the company was about to kick-off a briefing about new products based on Intel's Nehalem chip, the media and analysts in the room were informed - albeit in a very friendly way - that executives there would not be commenting on news stories of recent weeks - clearly a reference to the buzz around acquisition talks with IBM.
And with that, a handful of people stood up, as if to leave the room because the real news wasn't going to be discussed. Laughs followed and everyone settled in for a rundown of the company's announcements.
But, in reality, the future of Sun - rather, whether there's still hope for an acquisition for IBM - is really the 800-pound gorilla on campus that just can't be ignored. The executives were asked - somewhat indirectly - what the company might tell customers who are contemplating Sun's new products but concerned how long the company might be around to support them. The dodge-the-question sort of answer was something along the lines of customers being familiar with Sun's long-standing history as a provider of quality hardware.
Also see: Sun following the IBM deal collapse: Customer confusion en route
IBM's potential purchase of Sun: Here's why it makes sense
Today's news is a roll-out of new offerings that includes news advanced blades architecture new networking technologies and seven new systems based on Intel's Xeon 5500 processor, formerly known as Nehalem.
This makes the company the latest in a lineup of other companies, including HP and Cisco, that have announced made converged data center announcements in recent weeks. In a statement, Sun Microsystems said:
Sun's approach evolves "The Network is the Computer" as a guiding technology principle and delivers speed, simplicity and savings via integrating Sun technologies including Flash-based solid state disk (SSDs) and Open Storage platforms (speed); integrated networking (simplicity); and advanced thermal management and Solaris (savings).
The company said that Flash and SSD technologies integrated into the blade and servers increases response times, improves throughput and reduces power consumption, compared to servers with traditional disk drives. Additionally, the company said that embedded networking will reduce the cables used in a datacenter and eliminates a full switching layer.
Sun's Schwartz: I'm not worried about the future (or Sun's relevance)