Sun Shuts Door on VSM Open

After months of delays, Sun Microsystems finally pulled the plug on its long-awaited Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) Open tape management platform today and is now on the lookout for an alternative technology.

The hardware vendor took responsibility for VSM Open when it bought StorageTek for $4.1 billion last year. Even by that point, StorageTek had been working on the product, a tape management technology for open systems, for well over two years. (See Sun Closes on StorageTek .)

"With regard to VSM Open, it has not been cancelled," explained Sun spokeswoman Michelle Parkinson, in an email. "However, Sun has decided not to release the product in its current form."

Sun, she added, will still participate in the enterprise virtual tape market for open systems and is "currently evaluating other design and development options." The exec, however, would not reveal who the vendor is working with.

Sun had planned to ship the first VSM Open units early in 2006, with volume shipments slated for the second half of this year. But last year the vendor admitted that there were development issues that still needed to be addressed, prompting users to voice their concern about the delays. (See StorageTek Users Voice Support Fears.)William Hurley, senior analyst at the Data Mobility Group, was not exactly stunned by the news. "I am surprised that they didn't make this decision sooner," he explains. "I think you can boil this down to feature creep and being late to the market -- that adds a lot of pressure."

An IT manager at a university in the northwestern U.S., who asked not to be named, echoed these sentiments. "VSM Open has had such a rocky ride all along," he told Byte and Switch, citing the problem of the delays. "I kept thinking 'when it becomes real, I will take a closer look at it.' "

The IT manager, however, admits that he is now more interested in StorageTek's T10000 tape drives, as well as the vendor's Powderhorn tape libraries. (See Sun Launches Tape Libraries, Sun Unveils at Forum , StorageTek Wins Army Order, and University Makes Data Center Move.) "Putting VSM Open on top of that would have added a lot of complications," he says.

Initially, it appeared as though VSM Open would be based on StorageTek's FlexLine 600 family of products. Although StorageTek has had its VSM product for mainframes since 1998, it fell behind EMC and NetApp, rival tape vendors ADIC and Quantum, and startup Sepaton, in offering a virtual tape product for open systems. (See StorageTek Flexes Disk.)

Longer term, there is now a risk that Sun may get left even further behind. Today, for example, HDS signed a reseller deal with open systems specialist Diligent. (See Hitachi Offers VTL.)"The reality is that Sun needs to form some definitive statements around its direction," says Hurley, adding that there are "some great partnership opportunities out there."

Sun, for example, could use a vendor such as FalconStor to boost its open systems story, according to the analyst. "FalconStor could work very well with Linux," he says, explaining that a sizeable chunk of Sun's new Galaxy servers are now shipping with Linux. (See Sun Spawns Galaxy, Sun Ships Little, Talks Big, and Sun Signals Say 'Storage'.)

This could make sense. Sun, after all, already offers an open VTL product based on an OEM deal with FalconStor.

Although Sun is playing its open systems cards close to its chest, the vendor did confirm that it will launch "an enhanced VTL solution" in the fall, along with a VTL for "the super user" in the first quarter of next year. These, according to Parkinson, will help make Sun a player "in the mid-market of the open systems virtual business."

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch