Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Rich Napolitano, VP of Sun's Data Services Platform Group: Page 6 of 14

Byte and Switch: OK, you've said the Pirus box is in the hands of a few beta customers. But looking at the arc of this technology, two years later the jury is still out on virtualization, right?

Napolitano: Well, yes and no. There are really two answers on that. One is the whole proposition of virtualization is really just being refined in the industry, and we're trying to target it around solutions – which is why the first standalone product comes out via professional services... The idea of selling virtualization isn't really the point. You have to sell solutions, so that's what we're doing.

And then, if you look at our approach with the integrated product, where you take the Pirus technology and integrate it into a large-scale array, there you're beefing up the functional and performance and scaleability characteristics of a large-scale array. Once again, a tried-and-true proposition. This is about how to get to market... without trying to evangelize something new and different where people get nervous.

Byte and Switch: But the original idea of Pirus was to have the switch sitting in front of a JBOD [just a bunch of disks].

Napolitano: So we still do that.