Sun pushes ahead on storage as it integrates StorageTek

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Scott McNealy may call the mainframe “an airplane with pedals,” as he did today, but the mainframe is a big part of Sun’s storage business, thanks in part to its acquisition last year of Storage Technology Corp.

So when asked to reconcile McNealy’s view with the StorageTek business Sun acquired last year, company executives chuckled politely and said the company is spending millions of dollars acquiring mainframes for storage-related development. But more importantly, “it’s not the hardware that’s important; it’s the way we tie into those applications,” said Jon Benson, vice president of development at Sun’s StorageTek unit.

Prior to the acquisition, about 40% of StorageTek customers used mainframes.

Indeed, Sun’s Honeycomb project, which the company demonstrated, includes an embedded search technology that will allow application writers to offload the search capabilities to the storage system. Sun said the technology will speed access to data and improve the ability to use it.

One user at today's event, Justin Shaffer, vice president and chief architect at Major League Baseball Advance Media LP, said he’s interested in the Honeycomb system because it moves the storage closer to the data. “The more efficient we can make processes internally for accessing media and then redistributing it, the better off we are,” he said.

Sun announced a number of storage-related products, including a new release of its virtualization and data management tool, the Sun StorageTek VSM 5. That system is designed for mainframe environments and doubles capacity and performance from its previous generation, the company said.

Sun officials said the company isn't about to upset StorageTek customers -- some of whom may still be wary about the outcome of the acquisition. Among those customers is Erv Kuhnke, a consultant at B2C Inc., an Alexandria, Va.-based government IT consulting firm. He attended the event, in part, to learn more about Sun’s StorageTek integration.

“I’m a little concerned about it,” Kuhnke said about Sun's integration plans. StorageTek, he noted, “has always had excellent service.”

The idea of layoffs or other cutbacks at Sun continued to hang in the air. New CEO Jonathan Schwartz, appointed to the post last week, said at the time that some “pruning” is possible.

Scott McNealy, who gave up his CEO role but still serves as board chairman, said that Sun has opportunities “to get costs synergies” with its integration of StorageTek, including combining 160 redundant field sales and support offices. “That will actually have a positive effect” by allowing Sun to price more aggressively and improve product integration.