Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu create fastest Solaris-SPARC servers to address underutilisation of technology resources

Industry experts estimate that in distributed computing environments made up of several smaller servers, companies may only be using about 15 per cent of the processing capacity, leaving up to 85 per cent of the environment idle. This underutilisation could represent millions of dollars wasted annually on administration and management in the Middle East's technology sector - a problem that can be addressed through consolidation efforts.

To address consolidation issues as well as to increase reliability and performance, Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu Limited have joined forces to unveil a new line-up of co-developed Advanced Product Line (APL) servers that hold the promise of dramatically reshaping the computing market by delivering mainframe-class reliability at open systems prices. The new servers, based on the SPARC architecture and running the Solaris(TM) 10 operating system (OS), are the fastest SPARC servers ever, and will be marketed by both companies and affiliates under the "SPARC Enterprise" product brand.

"The SPARC Enterprise server line-up is the culmination of over two years of joint development between Sun and Fujitsu, building on our 20-year strategic relationship," said Hein-Van Der Merwe, chief technologist, Southern and Eastern EMEA. "The new servers address the growing customer need to maximise system utilisation by offering an array of highly granular partitioning and domaining technologies. These systems enable companies in the region to consolidate their technology resources rather than underutilising existing investments."

In a press briefing today, Sun specialists compared underutilisation of technology resources to transporting company employees in thirty dedicated cars instead of one large bus to illustrate the wasted resource and time inefficiencies. Consolidating and virtualising the IT environment with the new SPARC Enterprise systems will enable companies to centralise and reduce administration to focus on their core business issues.

"By combining our strengths, we aim to further accelerate the growth of the SPARC-Solaris ecosystem enabled by each parties focus on assigned engineering areas of expertise. By sharing development resources Sun and Fujitsu will not only bring products to market faster, but also enable more focus on new and innovative technologies," added Van Der Merwe.

The new systems are ideal for customers requiring highly scaleable, reliable servers, and needing to achieve increased system utilisation and performance through virtualisation. The servers leverage the powerful combination of Sun's expertise in open, scalable, partition-based network computing, and Fujitsu's expertise in mission-critical computing technologies and high-performance processor design.

"The combination of Fujitsu's mission-critical computing technology and Sun's Solaris in the new SPARC Enterprise server line-up, enables us to deliver maximum business value to our customers," said Rajesh Deepchandani, Product Marketing Manager- Enterprise Products, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Not only will they see outstanding performance, smarter resource management and reduced administrative intervention, but unparalleled levels of quality and scalability, which means increased longevity of use and improved business growth potential."

The SPARC Enterprise servers are also designed to ensure minimal downtime. They contain mainframe-class RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) features such as hot-swappable components, which includes memory and processors, redundant hardware, instruction retry, memory mirroring and extensive diagnostic and healing capabilities.

To protect customers' existing datacenter investments, Sun guarantees 100% Solaris binary compatibility. This means Sun's Sun Fire server or Fujitsu's PRIMEPOWER customers can adopt the new SPARC Enterprise platform with ease and confidence, enabling them to continue using the broad range of proven Solaris applications (the No. 1 share in the UNIX market) from the world's top ISV/IHV providers.

Van Der Merwe added: "Data center efficiency and achieving high levels of system utilisation is now the name of the game for CIOs and IT managers. But downtime is also not an option. We understand these needs, and are now expanding on what we've already delivered, and to give customers mainframe reliability at open system prices, and with unmatched virtualisation capabilities that Solaris customers expect."

The new SPARC Enterprise servers will include six models. Entry models use the UltraSPARC T1 processor developed by Sun Microsystems. Mid-range and high-end models use the SPARC64 VI processor developed by Fujitsu. These systems deliver up to 50 percent more performance than current SPARC-based servers. All the new servers run the Solaris 10 operating system.

Both Fujitsu branded and Sun branded SPARC Enterprise servers will be marketed worldwide. All other features are identical. The systems are available today.