Sun hits back at rivals
Vendor announces product launches aimed at displacing HP and IBM
Sun has launched a slew of new hardware platforms across its range and ramped up its Java support to help it fight back against its aggressive competitors.
The launches, including AMD Opteron-based systems certified for Windows, Java Enterprise and Java Desktop editions, were part of Sun's quarterly product announcement made last week.
"Our operating system and Java strategy is now more complete than that of any other company out there," claimed Gary Nugent, Sun's mid-market sales manager.
"We believe the sweet spot is on the network edge at the moment, which is one of the reasons why we also announced Unix-based security products."
Other announcements from Sun included UltraSparc IV processors on high-end machines, including the E20k and E25K, a preview of Solaris 10 and the new B1600 3u blade platform.
The SunFire V20K, a 1u rack-mounted server with two 64bit Opteron processors, is priced from $1,900, and is aimed at displacing similar IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) servers.
"HP said it is going to triple services through PartnerOne, but that could be at the expense of its reseller partners. That's a compelling reason to go for Sun instead," Nugent said.
Mark O'Hara, managing director of reseller Hydra, said: "Sun is being very, very aggressive. It will be interesting to see if [the Opteron and Windows announcements] devalue the brand. But if it's doing this it must have seen a hole in the market."
Greg Carlow, managing director of VAR Repton, said low-end volume products are not Sun's home territory.
"Dell, HP and IBM are big at this end of the market," he said. "Sun does have a loyal set of customers who would buy a coffee cup if it had 'Sun' written on the side of it, but only time will tell if Sun can get away with volume.
"The Java Desktop on Linux is a good idea, but it does depend on whether Linux actually takes off on the desktop. If it does, it will be very well placed."