Sun launches first blades from new Intel deal
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(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems is reaching for a larger share of the blade server market with Wednesday's launch of new models, including the first-ever Sun blades from its new alliance with chip maker Intel. Sun said the Sun Blade X6250 (starting list price: $3,695) is a two-socket server with dual-core Intel Xeon processors in each socket. It's the first Intel-based Sun server since the two companies announced in January aÂ deal for joint engineering, design, and marketingÂ of Intel's chips and Sun's Solaris operating system. Previously, the only x86 architecture processors Sun used were from Advanced Micro Devices. Sun also unveiled the Sun Blade X6220 ($3,995), a two-socket blade powered by dual-core AMD Opteron processors and the T6300 ($5,995) one-socket blade powered by Sun's own UltraSparc T1 processor. Sun also introduced the Sun Blade 6000 chassis ($4,995), which can hold up to 10 Sun blade servers and provide power, cooling and network connections to them. A user could install any combination of AMD, Intel and Sun-powered blades in one chassis. By offering Sun, AMD, and Intel processors in a blade form factor, "this is the most open and versatile blade platform out on the market," said Mike McNerney, director of Sun's blades server product line. "It is a compelling and interesting proposition." By using Intel inside its blades, Sun can now serve customers who favor the Intel processor platform, said Matthew Eastwood, group vice president for enterprise platform research at IDC. AMD made a good run at Intel with competitive processors in recent years but Intel has re-established itself as the market leader. "I think the biggest advantage for Sun is in the area of credibility in the x86 market. It really shows to enterprise customers that Sun is committed to x86," said Eastwood. Using Intel may also make Sun more competitive with blade server industry leaders Hewlett-Packard and IBM, he said, though they are far ahead in sales. Over the last four quarters, IBM sold $1.136 billionÂ worth of blade servers for a 38.9 percent market share, closely followed by HP's $1.127 billionÂ in revenue for a 38.6 percent market share, according to IDC numbers. Sun ranked fifth with only $100 million in blade revenue for a 3.4 percent share. That gap gives HP an opportunity to criticize Sun's latest news. "Sun is a non-player in blades and has failed to grow any appreciable market share," said Eric Krueger, an HP spokesman, in an e-mail. Noting that HP introduced its c-Class blade servers in mid-2006 at about the same time Sun introduced its SunBlade 8000 line, Krueger added, "HP has enjoyed a rather quick ascension to No. 1 in blade revenues and shipments while Sun owns a very small position of this rapidly growing market." But it's the rapidly growing nature of the blade market that, along with Intel deal, give Sun a chance to improve its share, said Eastwood. IDC forecasts the blade server market to grow to $11.3 billion by 2011 from $3.77 billion in 2007, and for blades to account for 28.8 percent of all server unit sales in 2011, up from 11.3 percent this year. "Sun has a long way to go but there's really no reason why a customer wouldn't consider Sun, particularly a traditional Sun customer or some emerging classes of customers like Web 2.0 companies," he said. "They are not really married to one supplier or another." The Sun-Intel deal also opens another front in Intel's competitive battle with AMD. Every Intel-powered Sun blade sold is a lost sales opportunity for a Sun-AMD blade. But AMD doesn't see it that way. "I suppose you could look at it that way, but if you look at the market it general we're continuing to grow our footprint in the marketplace," said Bruce Shaw, AMD's director of worldwide commercial and enterprise marketing. AMD is scheduled to launch a newÂ quad-core processor, code-named Barcelona, around mid-year.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Intel has 16 new processors to show off in the desert, while AMD plans to trickle out a few details about its upcoming notebook processor technology next week at CES.
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InfoWorld - Adding spark to its&#160;Sun Fire line&#160;of servers, Sun Microsystems&#160;is expected to announced its first x86-based quad-core systems Tuesday .
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard has begun shipping a new product that the company thinks will give it an edge over rival IBM&#160;in the market for blade servers.
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InfoWorld - Armed with a new form factor and its clustering management software, Penguin Computing on Wednesday launched an aggressively priced Linux-based blade server targeted at the lower end of the market -- a market recently entered into by Dell Computer.
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Intel Corp. , the world's largest  semiconductor maker, said on Thursday it plans to start  shipping new processors for desktop and laptop computers in  August.
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Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW.O is  staging its first press and customer event in New York on  Tuesday in three years to roll out new products and woo  customers in the banking industry, one of the network computer  maker's most important markets.
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Eyeing Sun's Niagara flow Intel has confirmed plans to "tick" and "tock" AMD into submission.â¦
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InfoWorld - Advanced Micro Devices is undaunted by rival Intel&#8217;s recent headline-grabbing announcements of 45-nm (nanometer) processing technology and a deal to supply Xeon chips to Sun Microsystems.
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Hewlett-Packard is beefing up its Integrity BladeSystems with a new model released last week thatâs intended to handle memory and CPU intensive applications.
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New switch and expansion card address market demand for faster throughout from blade servers.
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Chip maker Intel is introducing a series of new processors designed especially for business and e-commerce uses.
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In an effort to encourage hardware vendors to build components for the blade platform they co-develop, Intel Corp. and IBM Corp. on Thursday will open up parts of the BladeCenter design specifications, according to documents obtained by IDG News Service.
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SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) today unveiled its next generation Sun Ray(TM) Server Software 3.0 an interoperable, platform that enables instant
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Sun Microsystems will detail its high-end UltraSparc IV+ processor Tuesday, a chip code-named &quot;Panther&quot; that will roughly double the speed of servers using the current processor.
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Ziff Davis - IBM next month will start powering its blade servers with Intel Corp.'s low-voltage version of its "Nocona" processor.
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SUN ANNOUNCED THE UltraSPARC IV+ this morning, most probably the last of its line. Sun will be taking a new direction from this point on, with the new Fujitsu co-developed chips being a definite step sideways