The Hindu Business Line : Sun Micro bets big on open storage systems

Hyderabad, June 10 Sun Microsystems is betting big on its new 7,000 series first open storage appliances, which were rolled out in the country in January.

It is estimated that the total storage market, including hardware, software and services, would generate $90 billion in revenues by 2011, with the open storage market being about $10.6 billion.

“We predict that open storage will represent more than 20 per cent of the external disk market by 2011 or about $5 billion of the $24-billion external disk market,” Mr Luc Gheysens, Storage Practice Director (Emerging Markets), Sun Microsystems, told press persons here on Wednesday.

He was here to showcase the open storage offerings, which are priced upwards of Rs 3 lakh.

Cheaper option

Mr Gheysens said open storage systems provided a cheaper option, which had the potential to transform the $40-billion proprietary market.

Open storage leverages industry-standard components and open software to build scalable and reliable enterprise systems.

“Sun’s open storage combines open-source software with industry-standard hardware, to enable companies reduce their dependence on high-price systems,” he pointed out.

Sun has already sold such systems to companies in the telecom and media sectors.

“Our target sectors are the Internet providers, pharmaceutical, oil exploration, banking and financial services, which require huge data storage systems,” Mr Siva Sankaran, Director (Storage Practice), Sun Microsystems India, said.

The company is also willing to offer the technology to other firms that want to sell the systems with value-addition to suit specific industries.

“The value-added products will go under the Sun brand. Therefore, we will have control over the value-added products that other companies might want to sell,” Mr Gheysens said.

Sun Microsystems has emerged the leading player in the Indian UNIX external disk storage market in 2008, with a 26.2 per cent market share in terms of factory revenue, reflecting a growth of 18.1 per cent over 2007.