Storage Technology Corp says its long-term partner for open systems disk technology is now Sun Microsystems rather than Data General Corp, which agreed to be acquired earlier this week by StorageTek’s rival EMC Corp (CI No 3,721). StorageTek says that Sun’s forthcoming modular disk technology, which it plans to introduce onto the market in the first quarter of next year, will be more scalable and more flexible than the Clariion systems, but says it will protect its customer investments and continue to offer Clariion systems for some time to come.
The news is bad – if not unexpected – for EMC, which faces a similar loss of Clariion OEM business from Hewlett-Packard Co (which ended its four-year reseller agreement with EMC back in June) and from Sequent Computer Systems Inc (just acquired by EMC’s biggest rival, IBM Corp). Other Clariion OEMs include Dell Computer Corp, Silicon Graphics Inc, Groupe Bull, ICL Plc, NEC Corp and Unisys Corp.
StorageTek plans a new line of systems based on the Sun technology. It will continue to develop the Iceberg systems it currently sells to IBM Corp as the Ramac line for the high-end mainframe attached marketplace. The IBM resale agreement closes at the end of 2000. But, according to StorageTek’s chief strategist Walt Hinton, we really needed to align with a partner in the ‘dot com’ space to gain more of a foothold in the internet data center and applications hosting businesses. Sun’s technology will be used for a new line of systems aimed at the client-server networked computing space.
It also plans to deploy storage management applications on the Sun systems, something it says it can’t do with Clariion. StorageTek will add its own applications, and also potentially buy in applications from Sun and from third parties. These will be written to Sun’s Jiro, or StorX APIs. Sun has some applications forthcoming based on the technology it acquired from Encore Computer Systems Inc, include Instant Image a point-in- time storage backup product comparable to EMC’s Timefinder, and RDC, a remote mirroring product. Jiro will also be used to support common management tools across the heterogeneous environments that will eventually make up storage area networks.
Sun will also release its own versions of the disk products, but says it will stick to its own Solaris customer base and Windows NT customers. Meanwhile, Sun will also take future StorageTek automated tape library products, based on the current 9840 line and due on the market by the end of this calendar year. Sun currently sells only mid-range tape libraries. The two companies have signed a multi-year contract, which they predict will be significant and long-lasting.
