Sun Moves Closer To N1 With New Acquisition

Sun executives late last month said the company acquired Terraspring, a privately held, Fremont, Calif.-based developer of technology that automates the deployment of software across multiple servers.

N1 is Sun's vision of how widely distributed computing resources,including servers, storage, software and networking,can be virtualized and managed as a single system, said Steve MacKay, vice president of N1 and management systems at Sun, in a previous interview with CRN.

MacKay said the N1 architecture consists of four parts: foundation resources such as servers, blade servers and storage devices; virtualization to turn those resources into computing pools; provisioning, which allows services to be provisioned to the pools of resources; and telemetry, which allows setting of policies to manage the services and not the individual components.

In September, Sun bought Pirus Systems, an Acton, Mass.-based developer of hardware and software technologies that enable virtualization across a heterogeneous environment. This virtualization helps enable storage to be provisioned automatically so that users do not have to be concerned with details such as which hardware is provisioned for which application. Sun executives called Pirus' virtualization technology a critical component of the N1 strategy.

Virtualization makes sense from the customer's and solution provider's points of view, said Dan Pearson, sales manager at Ncell Systems, a Minnetonka, Minn.-based Sun channel partner. "Instead of discrete servers, customers want policies," he said.

Increased automation from virtualization adds up to opportunities for solution providers going forward, Pearson said. "As the network grows, customers will need to add more servers, more training [and more integration, meaning service opportunities for us," he said.

Mark Melenovsky, director of server research at IDC, said the Terraspring acquisition is one of the foundations on which Sun will build its N1 architecture, and the technology also will help Sun develop automated software deployment strategies for its upcoming blade servers.

But while Sun is getting a boost in its N1 strategy, other vendors may have hit a stumbling block, according to analysts.

Hewlett-Packard is using technology from Terraspring as part of its Adaptive Infrastructure, an initiative similar to N1, said Melenovsky.

"The acquisition may affect HP going forward," he said.

IBM's project eLiza, which focuses on autonomic computing, has features similar to those of N1 and also uses Terraspring technology, said a Sun spokesperson.

The spokesperson said HP and IBM will continue to have access to the current version of Terraspring technology, according to prior agreements between the companies. However, Sun will incorporate more recent developments, and HP and IBM won't have access to those future versions, the spokesperson said.