14 DAY TRIAL // Sun Microsystems is reported to plan the introduction of Flash-based servers and storage systems in the first half of the next year. The new products are said to be based on the company's earlier adoption of Flash in its ZFS storage platform. According to Sun officials, the use of Flash is able to lower the total operational cost of storage, especially when data or performance intensive applications are involved. A faster move to Flash before the end of 2008 was rumored earlier this year.
As some voices say, upcoming systems should deliver between 10 and 20 percent better performance levels. Moreover, the company is expected to officially announce the move in the first quarter of the next year. “Certainly, there are lots of Web 2.0 customers out there who are trying to get performance gains so anything that pushes out their scale is going to be valuable,” said one executive familiar with the plans.
According to Greg Papadopoulos, Sun Chief Technology Officer, “Flash memory will be the catalyst [...] that leads to a rethinking of storage”. He made the remark at a gathering of analysts and reporters on Tuesday evening, but did not provide any further detail.
Also on Tuesday, the company announced in a statement that it would accept no more customers for its Network.com pay-per-use utility service. As Dave Douglas, senior vice president of cloud computing and developer platforms group, said, the two-year-old project had been moving forth slowly.
“I think the model makes sense […] it definitely (appealed to) a set of customers but not as big a set as we would have hoped,” Douglas added. Lew Tucker, who was hired in August to take over as vice president and CTO of Sun's Cloud Computing initiative, revealed that there might be a “retooled” Network.com at a certain point in the future.