Sun Microsystems Inc will today introduce its latest high-end server computer, as the company woos International Business Machines Corp's mainframe customers and wraps up an overhaul of its product line.
The Sun Fire 15K, the successor to Sun's best-known E10000 server that tackles massive database applications, uses as many as 106 of its new UltraSparc III chips. The machines can cost more than US$10 million each. The company will showcase the servers at an event today in New York.
Sun, the fastest-growing server maker last year, started updating its products last September and since then has started selling its low-end and mid-priced servers with the more powerful chip. The company has stumbled in recent months, as once high-flying Internet customers and big corporations scale back purchases. Sun posted a loss last quarter and has said it's unlikely to make money in the current period.
"Sun is a little beleaguered right now," said Mike Kahn, an analyst at Clipper Group, a Wellesley, Massachusetts-based consulting firm. The new product "is important to Sun if they succeed in going after mainframe customers. If it opens new markets to them, then it's very important." Palo Alto, California-based Sun needs the refreshed gear to stay ahead of rivals such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co, which are also adding new products and winning more sales of rival machines that run the Unix operating system.
IBM won 21 percent of the US Unix-server market in the June quarter, up from 16 percent a year ago, according to Dataquest.
Hewlett-Packard's share rose to 21 percent from 18 percent. Sun slipped to 51 percent from 53 percent, Dataquest said.
"It reasserts and extends the leadership position we have shown over the last four or five years," said John Shoemaker, who runs Sun's server business. "This is as powerful as three-plus mainframes." Sun is targeting two groups of clients with the 15K, previously codenamed StarCat: customers who already use Sun gear that are clamoring for more power, and new market segments that have IBM mainframes.
The new machines are almost three times as powerful as IBM's biggest mainframe at a third the price, Sun said. They include features that let customers move applications off their old mainframes and on to the new Sun gear, and updated programs that let users divide systems into partitions.
"The stats make it look like a very big machine and a worthy successor to the 10K," Clipper's Kahn said.
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