Nigel Dessau

Sun's Mainframe Commitment

Earlier in the week I posted some answers to questions I got from analysts at the Sun Analyst conference. The post has prompted an additional slew of questions, many on the subject of our dedication to mainframe products. The IBM FUD machine (was I part of that once?) is still trying to convince some customers that they shouldn't take Sun's Storage commitment to the mainframe seriously.

Now as many of those who work with me know – I have a place in my heart for the mainframe. My first job was running test scripts for a Vector Facility under VM on a 3090. So I go back 20 years with them. Even though I now work at Sun, my days as a mainframe SE are long over, and a Sun server can do so much of what they do, I still believe there is a place for them in our large data and transaction based z/OS customer base.

But I do understand how people might worry. Sun has historically been negative about mainframes, so is StorageTek's mainframe business safe in Sun's hands? The answer is YES. And, more importantly, probably safer than it was when StorageTek stood alone.

Jonathan and the whole management team have been clear that we will work with our customers AND with what they have installed today – mainframes, Linux, Windows – what ever. Jonathan has been consistently delivering this message for almost a year to our storage customers, for example at FORUM in Oct., and again last week at the Sun Analyst event.

But actions speak louder than words:

• Last year we invested over $8m in mainframe hardware and software. We have a brand new z9 with all the latest channels and, like the rest of the world, are doing our best to stay current on z/OS. I just checked with Fred Casanova and since our mainframe upgrades we went from 2100 MIPS to 5269 MIPS. Our LPAR's range from z/OS 1.4 to z/OS 1.8 and we have 2500 MIPS installed and running z/OS v1.6.

  (By the way, Fred is one of the reasons customers should buy tape products from Sun. You don't want to install it until Fred's finished testing it!)
  

• On the development front, we have just increased head count again and it wouldn't surprise me to find out we had more people working on our mainframe products at Sun than we did as StorageTek.
  

• Last year we shipped VSM5 and VSM4e (both new products) for the virtual market . Also, we just shipped the performance update for the SL8500 library and you should see partitioning in the next 90 days. And, just yesterday, we went GA with the FiCON version of our T10000 encryption drive – so it has been a busy few months.
  

• In the next year or so you should see VSM 6, a new mid-tier mainframe library, updated software and the next version of our T10000 and 9840 drives all for the mainframe.
  

• Let's not forget the ST9000 family of disk solutions which attach to mainframe and open systems. I should also mention SVA for those loyal customers who have invested in them – we continue to ship them and will update them as we update the VSM systems.

Basically, we continue to updated the whole product line!

I understand how easy it is to ask if we are serious about the mainframe. But I could also ask the question about how safe is tape in IBM's hands? (OK maybe I did some FUD – but I could give it up at any time!)

I remember in 1990 being educated as a sales rep at IBM that "no-one would need tape. Only crazy people by tape Silos. That's not the future." However, just last year, Storage Magazine reported that over half of the large tape customers expect to spend more on tape this year – as well as more on disk. Maybe another blog another day on what the future of tape is – let's just says it looks pretty good from my standpoint.

The reality is, most, if not all the major innovations in tape and tape automation have either come from STK or were driven because of the competition with STK. Competition is good for any market and we don't intend to let IBM have either the tape market or the mainframe tape market all to themselves.

Posted at 06:08PM Feb 15, 2007 by Nigel Dessau in Sun Storage  |  Comments[3]