Sun adds SPARC to 20-year affair with Fujitsu

RAVI MENON

CYBERMEDIA NEWS

Injecting a fresh burst of Solaris power to its networking computing initiatives, Sun Microsystems has announced the expansion of its 20-year strategic relationship with Fujitsu to include the joint development and delivery of future generation Solaris and SPARC-based systems. Sun will bring its Solaris and SPARC-based server product lines, codenamed Advanced Product Line (APL), into the datacenter by mid-2006, in what the company calls the industry's most complete family of datacenter systems yet.

APL, which will eventually spearhead Sun's Java Enterprise System, will replace Sun's and Fujitsu's existing SunFire and Primepower product lines. Both companies will work together to deliver the best in class platforms for all possible network computing workloads. With this, Sun will attempt to grow the combined market for Solaris and its SPARC series of microprocessors.

"Sun can now expand the available market for the Solaris and SPARC family of systems, with partnerships extending across consumers and developers. With Fujitsu, we are making huge strides into the mainframe computing environment," says Sun Microsystems President and CEO, Jonathan Schwartz.

"Sun continues to grow the broadest operating platforms in the industry, spanning Java and the Java Enterprise System, the Solaris operating environment running industry standard x86 servers, up into the mainframe environment, and a newly expanded SPARC family, providing the highest performance computing infrastructure for the largest diversity of network workloads. Sun and Fujitsu are now better positioned to drive share in the growing market for network computing," he notes.

Sun sees no drastic changes in its existing product roadmap and will continue to reinforce its commitment to SPARC by upgrading the existing UltraSPARC 4. Set for release next year to power its APL server line will be UltraSPARC 4. "While Fujitsu will focus on mainframes, we will handle the throughput computing part of APL," comments Sun's Scalable Systems Group Executive VP, David Yen. "Customers will benefit from the safe and seamless binary compatibility along the SPARC roadmap," he adds.

Sun's Solaris is the world's leading enterprise-class operating system with an over 35% share of the Unix server market. Sun and Fujitsu are now working together to make the Sun Fire and primepower product lines available for distribution through both companies by the time APL is released. These arrangements will vary by geography. The companies and their respective customers will all benefit from the expanded distribution of both companies' existing product lines prior to the introduction of the jointly-developed,