Sun to concentrate on storage, software and services

Sun Microsystems is to focus its research and product development on three key areas during the next five years: massive scalability, continuous real-time availability, and an integrated hardware and software stack.

Sun expects to develop servers with between 100 and 200 processors, according to Ed Zander, the company's chief operating officer. It also expects to develop improved configuration features and clustering capabilities.

Zander, speaking at a conference in London, claimed that "Solaris 8 is four to five years ahead of any Windows NT or Linux-type products, and well ahead of other versions of Unix". He added that the company's previous 'bets' had produced rich rewards.

In 1995, Sun staked all on networking technologies when "other than Al Gore, no-one was using the Internet", Zander joked.

The company's last "five-year plans", outlined in 1995, centred on bandwidth, the internet and Java.

Patricia Sueltz, president of software products and services at Sun, said the new research strategy emphasised storage, services and software, as well as servers.

Sueltz said Sun's key technologies include Java and extensible markup language in the wireless market, integrated enterprise services, enterprise application integration and products in the storage market.

Analysts gave a muted reaction to the announcement. "The goals Sun has set itself are attainable, but I don't know if they're as revolutionary as its last set of bets, which included Java," said Philip Dawson, senior research analyst at Meta Group.

"The ability to deliver a robust infrastructure will be a key challenge for server vendors. The agility needed to respond to a changing business market threatens robustness."