World Class Storage from Sun Microsystems

John Fowler, EVP, Systems, Jon Benson, Senior VP, Storage for Systems delivered a talk called, "The New Value Equation for Storage: Innovating to Accelerate Growth", at the Sun Analyst Summit 2008. PDF slides are available. (1 hour and 12 minutes, 39 slides)

Jon summarizes Sun's position ("Why Sun Will Win") on one of the last slide thus:

• Sales Opportunities
• Growth in storage market
• Server/storage attach
• Existing install base
  
• Market Dynamics
• Datacenters are running out of space, energy and budget
• Volume of content is increasing (Web 2.0, mandated retention, etc.)
• Efficient content retrieval mandated by compliance
• Customer acceptance of alternatives to vendor lock-in
• Unsustainable storage economics
  
• Sun's Approach
• Open
• Innovation
• Breakthrough Economics
  

During the presentation, Jon cited some facts to support his statement that Sun's "Storage Momentum Continues":

• 2nd straight quarter of Y/Y Storage Products revenue growth
• Grew disk billings 7% Y/Y Q2FY08 vs. Q2FY07
• First in UNIX disk storage systems unit shipments (IDC, 12/07)
• 16 consecutive quarters
• First in the total tape automation- enterprise market (IDC,1/08)
• Three consecutive quarters of share gain in enterprise tape drives
• Highest growth rate (>40%) for midrange storage for disk storage systems Q3CY07/Q3CY06 among leading vendors (IDC, 12/07)

Some "Little Known Facts About Sun Storage":

• The leading provider of tape for Web 2.0 companies
• Backing up 12 of the 20 fastest supercomputers in the world
• First and only open-source key management system for encryption
• Unique software innovation in tape, disk, and OS areas (CAM, ELS, SLM, SAM/Q, ZFS, etc.)
• Fastest growth rate in midrange storage among leading vendors
• Midrange arrays ranked #1 in quality two years in a row (Storage Magazine)
  
• SL8500 holds >80% market share in enterprise environments with libraries greater than 1000 slots (IDC)
  
• Sun Fire X4500 (“Thumper”) shipped >70,000 Tb of storage in a single year—more than any single product from EMC of NetApp
  
• 36% of the world’s archived data resides on Sun
  

Jon gives and example where Nationwide Insurance converted from

• 9 Tape libraries (9310, 9740, 9710)
• 75 tape drives (T9940A, T9840A)

to

• 3 Tape libraries (SL8500, L700E)
• 2 Sun VTLs
• 40 tape drives (T9940B, T9840B)

Saving: $945k over three years

• 75% reduction in maintenances costs
• 70% less datacenter space
• 60% less energy use
• 99% reduction in oracle recovery time

Sun is very focused on an "Open Storage" and intends to bring to the traditional storage market the same kind of disruption that "Open Systems" brought to proprietary systems.