Sun Microsystems Inc is to launch its Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop-based disk subsystems, known as Photon (CI No 3,138) in October, with delivery scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. As a first step in its push into the third party storage business, Photon can be connected to Hewlett-Packard Co HP-UX and Windows NT-based servers as well as systems running Sun’s Solaris Unix implementation, says Robin Harris, senior product marketing manager at Sun. Currently in beta sites, Photon will also be extended to support IBM Corp MVS mainframes, he says, assuming that Sun’s acquisition of mainframe data sharing pioneer Encore Computer Corp is completed in October.