Sun Reshuffles Storage... Again

Sun has reshuffled its storage pack, moving key execs and overhauling its engineering strategy ahead of product announcements around disk, tape, and the vendor's server/storage "Thumper" hybrid. (See Sun Names New Execs.)

After less than a year in Sun's storage hot seat, David Yen will take over the vendor's newly created microelectronics division, focused on popularizing Sun's OpenSparc technology. (See Sun Creates OpenSPARC and Sun Expands SPARC.)

"That is David's background. He is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on that subject," says Nigel Dessau, Sun's senior vice president of storage marketing and business operations.

Jon Benson, an 18-year StorageTek veteran, will assume Yen's old job as head of the vendor's storage business.

Sun, which has struggled to swallow its $4.1 billion StorageTek acquisition, has spent the last year or so trying to make sense of its storage business. (See Sun to Acquire StorageTek for $4.1B, Sun Returns to Profitability, and Sun Reveals Roadmap.)In Sun's most recent quarterly report, storage was something of a blot on the vendor's financials. Storage revenues were down 7 percent year-over-year to $626 million, thanks largely to integration issues connected to the StorageTek acquisition. (See Storage Slows Down Sun.)

This is not the first time that Sun has reordered its storage business. Last year, for example, new CEO Jonathan Schwartz implemented widespread changes in the firm's management structure. (See Sun Takes Action Amidst Concerns and Schwartz Shakes Up Sun.)

At that time, the firm's head storage honcho, Mark Canepa, jumped ship to Extreme Networks and was replaced by Yen, the former executive vice president of Sun's scalable systems group. (See Sun's Canepa Goes Extreme and Sun Names Storage Boss.)

At least one analyst told Byte and Switch that this latest reshuffle underlines the need for a cohesive storage strategy in Santa Clara. "Just when you think that they have righted the ship and balanced it out, they go running from one side of the ship to the other," says Greg Schulz of the StorageIO Group.

Sun also overhauled its engineering efforts today. "There were a number of products that we were doing collaboratively between the systems and storage product teams [and] we have decided to consolidate all these into the systems group," explains Dessau.This means that development work on certain storage-related products such as Honeycomb, a storage device that can execute application code; the Thumper platform; and Sun's next-generation NAS, will be handled by the systems group. "It's really an efficiency thing. I think that it will give us a faster time to market," says Dessau.

Sun has already made a limited first release of its Honeycomb technology and is now planning a much broader roll-out, according to the exec. (See Kodak OEMs 'Honeycomb'.) "The next release, later this year, will use even more general purpose hardware and software," he says.

This afternoon's announcements mark the latest of a string of changes to Sun's storage division other than restructuring. Last month, for example, Sun finally washed its hands of its 6920 midrange SAN system, foisting the under-performing array onto Hitachi Data Systems. (See Sun Shifts SAN to HDS.)

Last year, industry sources claimed that Sun had talked to HDS and perhaps others about selling all or select parts of its storage business, though Sun played down these rumors. (See Sun Storage Chief: We're Not for Sale.)

A sell-off could not be further from the truth, according to Dessau. "Bringing in a long-time StorageTek person [to head our storage business] doubles down our investment rather than anything else," he says. "It's proof that we're in it for the long haul."More product launches are also imminent, according to the exec. "We will be making a whole series of product announcements over the next few weeks, within our disk and tape portfolio," says Dessau, adding that the vendor is planning about eight launches for next month's Storage Networking World event in San Diego.

Sun is also planning an upgrade of its X4500 technology, better known as "Thumper". (See Sun Thumps Storage-Server Hybrid and Sun Signals Say 'Storage'.) "The X4500 is just the first in a range of solutions that will exploit the architecture and design," says Dessau.

StorageIO Group's Schulz told Byte and Switch that shifting Thumper's engineering efforts into Sun's systems group is no big surprise. "It makes sense," he says. "If you look at the X4500, it's [essentially] a server with a lot of storage."

James Rogers, Senior Editor Byte and Switch