Sun Product Rollout Features Services Push

Delivering the keynote at Sun Microsystems' quarterly product update for the first time since being promoted to president and chief operating officer in April, Jonathan Schwartz in Shanghai, China, Tuesday highlighted the company's strategy to expand its services effort with new products and support for customers.

Schwartz says the strategy will include offering more flexible subscription-based products. "The role of network innovation at Sun is around driving not only the technology agenda, but also driving the business agenda," Schwartz said. "We're bringing innovative pricing models, the Java enterprise system to other people's software and hardware, and scalable enterprise offering on Opteron."

Among the new offerings is a subscription-based Sun Preventative Services that brings together more than 100 different services in one portfolio designed to reduce costs and increase service levels in the data center, he says.

"The benefit to us is we're shifting from about 20% of our revenue being reoccurring and the rest transaction based, to flipping that formula, and allowing us to radically reduce our cost of sales," says Larry Singer, Sun's senior VP of global market strategies.

Sun also is launching a Java Enterprise developer promotion to offer development tools running on the Solaris operating system and bundled on Sun's latest entry-level Opteron-based servers, at a 3-year subscription price of $1,499 per year.The company also unveiled the second release of the Java Enterprise System, a portfolio of identity-management products, and second release of the Java Desktop System.

In addition, Sun introduced a per-citizen priced model for its Java Enterprise System targeted at under-developed or developing nations. Instead of charging the normal $100 per employee in an enterprise, the fee will be based on a per-citizen basis calculated using the United Nations ranking for a country's development status.

"It's pretty significant in that it's allowing us to drive into markets that have traditionally not been viewed as opportunities for the network, but that we believe will be increasingly important," Schwartz says.

Sun also introduced software to help companies manage data collected by radio-frequency identification. The Sun Java System RFID Software is designed to collect, process, filter, and pass on to other applications information collected by RFID systems.

The systems company, best known for its servers and Solaris operating system, also introduced a low-cost storage system and software products. The Sun StorEdge 9980 Power Unit is priced at just 2 cents per megabyte of capacity. Sun also is offering installation services and a management console.Next month, Sun plans to deliver the Sun StorEdge 6920 midrange system with integrated replication and data-migration capabilities. Sun StorEdge SAM-FS and Sun StorEdge QFS file system software enhancements include continuous dynamic archiving for business-continuity efforts and easier management and configuration. Randy Kearns, an industry analyst at the Evaluator Group research firm, says Sun is being aggressive and doing things differently from other storage vendors. Sun's storage products offer "customers more granularity for pricing and require less staffing for storage system installation and management," Kearns says. "And the prices are astounding."