Sun and AppIQ team up to create storage solutions
Sun and AppIQ team up to create storage solutions
Sun Microsystems Inc. has formed a partnership with AppIQ to licence AppIQ's storage area management technology and develop new heterogeneous, end to end management solutions for enterprises.
Although Sun Microsystems has been able to serve customers with the Sun StorEdge Enterprise Storage Management software, they have not been able to manage storage systems which fall out of their product line.
Since most of their customers do have products which are not part of the Sun collection, this new partnership will allow them to now produce storage management solutions for these customers too.
Sun chose AppIQ because of their broad range of heterogeneous storage management capabilities, including their focus on managing the complete storage stack from business application to disk spindle.
Mark Canepa, executive vice president, Sun Network Storage said: "This relationship further demonstrates Sun's focus on delivering network computing solutions that reduce cost and complexity for our customers. To date the cost of managing storage far exceeds the purchase price of the storage itself. Licensing and co-developing technology with AppIQ will give Sun the ability to deliver the heterogeneous management platform required to make storage resources available to applications as needed for increased performance at more affordable prices."
This licencing agreement will allow Sun to take advantage of AppIQ's advanced storage technology so that they can roll out fully interoperable improved products in the second half of this year.
The AppIQ developer toolkits also use technologies that fit in with Sun's strategic vision: Java, J2EE, XML and SOAP.
Senior Analyst Nancy Marrone-Hurley of the Enterprise Storage Group added: "AppIQ really is a perfect partner for Sun - its vision for standards-based management and open platforms is very synergistic with Sun's larger N1 Grid strategy. The co-development will enable Sun to take advantage of AppIQ's comprehensive, applications-focused storage management platform and to concentrate on accelerating the delivery of open, fully integrated enterprise management solutions."
The Sun StorEdge Enterprise Storage Manager framework will also use the functionality from AppIQ Storage Authority Suite to increase heterogeneous storage management capabilities.
The AppIQ Storage Authority Suite has been used as a platform for building a storage utility for enterprise through integrated SAN management, storage resource management (SRM) and storage provisioning. It provides heterogeneous device support for a wide range of arrays, SAN devices and host operating systems including Sun's Solaris operating system.
In addition, it offers application management and automation tools architected on the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) SMI-S standard.
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