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Sun's new computer server seeks more MENA marketshare

Officials said that by 2010 Sun Blade 6000 will allow the company, a global developer of technologies, to be the market leader in blade server, which continues to function as a computer even if some components are removed for power and space considerations.

Basil Ayass, Sun's MENA x64 product manager, said the company has partnered with Aptec, the region's leading provider of IT and telecom products, solutions and services, to distribute Sun Blade 6000 in the region, where over 70 units had been sold before the launch.

Sun Microsystem's system practice manager, Craig Vintcent, said the company has spent $2 billion per year for the last five years, or more than 10 per cent of its annual revenue of $14 billion, for research and development (R&D) to come up with innovative products.

"Sun is making its foray into the regional blade market...to meet customer demand for a more versatile system," officials said.

Ayass said the first buyers of Blade 6000, which targets the small and medium businesses (SMB) for its competitive price and reduced power consumption, included companies in the telecom, oil and gas, financial, retail, manufacturing, government and education sectors.

Stressing that Sun's latest product is the most open and versatile enterprise blade platform, Ayass said the modular system of Blade 6000 can run applications on Solaris, Windows, Linux and VMware.

"It can run any applications," he said, adding that the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), a research facility at the University of Texas, in Austin, is now building the world's largest "supercomputer" with Sun Blade 6000 as its platform.

Ayass said Sun Blade 6000 also offers a choice of blades powered by the UltraSPARC T1 processor with CoolThreads technology, Intel Xenon processors or AMD Opteron processors.

This gives customers the widest range of applications ranging from database, web tier and high performance computing (HPC) on a single common modular design, he stressed.

He said the new product will "redefine" the lifecycle of computer datacentre by doubling the memory and input/output (I/O) capacity of competing blades and rack-mount servers, which need at least a power cord and network cable to function as computers.