* Sun celebrates 25 years in the industry
Sun is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month and it’s in high spirits. After a few years of tough going, Sun really seems to be pulling itself out of its funk. A large part of the reason is its bear-like embrace of industry standard platforms. It offers Sun-designed Opteron servers and recently announced a deal with Intel to start selling Xeon-systems again soon.
But last week, Sun returned its focus to its Sparc line-up, rolling out servers co-developed with Fujitsu. Sun and Fujitsu laid out plans to integrate their Sparc-based server offerings in 2004 and Sun began selling Fujitsu PrimePower servers a year later.
Last week’s announcement, however, is the first joint product announcement since the two, which have been collaborating on Sparc design since the 1980s, announced the plan to integrate their server lines. Read the news story and get detailed information about the servers announced last week here.
Sun claims the new Sparc Enterprise servers are 50% faster than existing Sparc offerings and are designed to reliably handle multiple, virtual workloads. Sun’s story continues to be about maximizing efficiency while reducing power demands.
The Sparc Enterprise servers will be available from both Fujitsu and Sun. They will include entry-level models built on the UltraSparc T1 processor and midrange and high-end models built on Fujitsu’s Sparc64 VI processor. The servers support Solaris 10.
In other Sun news, the computer maker is celebrating its 25th anniversary by offering up to 65% off its servers, storage, services and software. The two-week sale started Monday.
Server offerings include half off the two-socket, dual-core Opteron-based Sun Fire x4500, which normally is priced starting at around $48,000, as well as up to half off the eight-socket, dual-core Opteron-based x4600. Other server promos include up to 60% off Sun Fire CoolThreads systems, based on the eight-core T1 processor.
Check out all of Sun’s anniversary offerings here.
