Sun Thickens Up in the Middle

Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) has upgraded its midrange storage offerings with the StorEdge 6000 family, as rivals Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) are also enhancing their products in this segment (see Sun Intros Midtier StorEdge 6000 and HP, IBM Muscle Up Midrange).

The StorEdge 6120 replaces Sun's T3 offering [ed. note: it's not called the T4!] and the StorEdge 6320 replaces the 3900, a system Sun first introduced just a little more than a year ago (see Sun Recharges Storage Lineup).

Meanwhile, Sun revealed that it hasn't officially landed a single paying customer yet for Pirus Networks' virtualization switch -- after shelling out around $160 million in stock last summer to buy Pirus (see Pirus Gets Sun Tan and Sun Beams on Pirus).

Sun, which has renamed the Pirus box the "N1 Data Platform," referred us to two companies when we asked for customer references: AstraZeneca, a large pharmaceutical company, and Nielsen Media Research, the TV audience measurement service.

But each of these companies say they're still in the process of kicking the tires on it. "We are evaluating the N1 Data Platform functionality that would allow us to maintain multiple versions of our data while consuming a relatively small amount of disk space," says Marty Lefebvre, VP of storage services at Nielsen. "Consolidating storage services will provide both cost savings and productivity gains."