You may or may not be surprised at the frequency that I am asked a question similar to the following: "Is Sun in the Mainframe storage business? I heard that Sun is only focused on OpenStorage."

Well contrary to what some other vendors want you to believe, Sun is definitely in the Mainframe storage business and has significantly enhanced those storage solutions since acquiring StorageTek (STK) back in 2005. In 2008 alone there were new tape drives (T9840D and T10000B – the first and only 1TB drive with a native FICON attachment option), a new automated tape library (SL3000), significant virtual tape enhancements (VSM), a new version of encryption (KMS 2.0), and new disk (ST9990V and ST9985V; DASD) models which included attachment options to mainframes. Also, Sun’s mainframe storage provides you with a native FICON attachment option. Not even the industry leading FICON vendor can make that claim – what is that all about? Sorry, I digress. Along with these new capabilities, the Sun mainframe storage software suite was also enhanced to accommodate the new and improved hardware. In fact, in 2008 Sun delivered the most prolific set of mainframe and open systems storage solutions in its history. And to be clear, all of Sun’s mainframe storage solutions can attach natively to the IBM System z10 server.

Definitely Sun is leading the industry in OpenStorage solutions and the Unified Storage 7000 family is by far the most exciting storage solution that has hit the industry in years. It is transforming the industry and is an example of what the innovative geniuses within Sun are developing. I was an employee of another IT vendor for over 20 years prior to joining Sun so I can state without hesitation that the Sun storage technology leads the industry in several categories including OpenStorage and, yes, mainframe tape solutions. That is one reason when looking back at the STK acquisition in 2005 I think it was a perfect fit for Sun. As STK led the industry with enterprise storage solutions then, Sun leads the industry in enterprise storage solutions today.

I invite you to have a meeting with the Sun Storage team and find out in more detail what Sun has been doing recently and what Sun is planning over the next few years.