Sun merged its Storage Division with its Systems Group today in an attempt to breathe new life into its storage business.
For some time now, storage has been a sore point for Sun, which struggled to swallow its $4.1 billion StorageTek acquisition and has since been hit by weaknesses in its OEM strategy and a slowdown in U.S. storage spending.
Sun's storage business will now be managed by John Fowler, executive vice president of the vendor's Systems Group. Jon Benson, who headed up the firm's storage operation, will report to Fowler, who in turn reports to CEO Jonathan Schwartz.
This is the third time in just over a year that Sun has made widespread changes to its storage operation. Last year it was even rumored that the vendor may sell off all or part of its storage business, possibly to Hitachi, although this was denied by Sun.
Speaking on a conference call today, Sun's Fowler promised that the merger would focus on technology, as opposed to job reductions. "There's a lot of technology developments going on in the areas of servers and storage," he said, explaining that the merger centers on the two groups' R&D, engineering, and marketing teams.
