September 12, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Since early 2003, Sun Microsystems' low-cost computing initiative has been making waves in the enterprise market. But in a very applicable way, says vice president of marketing and strategy for volume systems products Souheil Saliba, the values of the low-cost initiative are the values of the service provider market.
The initiative, says Saliba, began with a very customer-centric viewpoint, picking up on a specific need voiced by customers for an IT partner to help them reduce costs and complexity in their infrastructure.
"We realize that means lower-cost products," he says. "That was kind of a given. But we drilled in a little bit more and said 'what does that mean to you?' They would tell us that it wasn't just dropping costs on the platforms, although that was an important aspect of it. It was really much more looking at their operation and IT infrastructure and helping them figure out how they could take cost out of it."
The means of reducing ongoing operating expense would vary by customer and industry, of course, says Saliba. Some circumstances demanded server consolidation. Some called for the streamlining of the way data centers were operated. In the case of Web hosts and other ISPs, he says, there are often savings to be found in ongoing operational costs.
"Essentially, we've been on a significant march to do two things," he says. "One was to lower the initial acquisition cost. But also in many ways to lower the complexity, which also translates to lowering the ongoing operational costs."
In February 2003, Sun rolling out its low-cost initiatives, announcing its N1 data center strategy, and its first instance, the N1 Provisioning Server 3.0 for blade servers. In April, the company followed with its Sun Fire V210 and V240 two-way servers, significantly lowering the price point for two-way servers based on SPARC and Solaris. In May, the company introduced a new two-way platform designed to run Solaris X86 as well as Linux. The company also launched its 3000 series of storage low-end storage products this year, which Saliba calls a "perfect compliment" to the company's low-cost computing services.
Of particular importance to service providers, says Saliba, are the company's blade server products as well as its provisioning software, which has demonstrated a remarkable ability to improve operational efficiencies in the data center.
"When we did some of the N1 pilots," he says, "we saw that the utilization rate on some of the existing servers, as well as the new servers that were being deployed, was going up anywhere from about 20 to 30 percent to upwards of 70 to 80 percent. And that is a significant savings. That's a lot more compute power they can leverage before they have to add to their data centers."
Ultimately, while the enterprise space has been, and will most likely remain, the greatest market for Sun's products and services, Saliba says the values and ideas of the service provider market, as well as specific suggestions in certain cases, inform the design of all the company's data center products.
At the same time, he says, low-cost computing is a philosophy that should resonate with every service provider. Increasing operational efficiencies is the most logical way to reduce costs for companies that obviously can't afford to sacrifice performance.
Saliba says the low-cost rollout is set to continue with the launch of a new set of products later this month. And this next group of low-cost solutions is going to bear the stamp of Sun's real interaction with service providers.
"Frankly," he says, "a lot of them are going to have smiles on their faces because I've had discussions with a lot of them where they've told me that we have to do some of this stuff. So I think some of them are going to realize that their signature is somewhere on this strategy. This isn't a strategy that we sat in a boardroom and put together.
