Sun's acquisition of Pirus another approach for storage abstraction

Sun Microsystems has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Pirus Networks, Inc. Pirus Networks is a privately held company based in Acton, Mass. Pirus designs and manufactures storage networking components (intelligent switches) for open systems environments. Sun will acquire Pirus Networks in a stock-for-stock transaction. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of Sun's 2003 fiscal year (Dec. 29, 2002).

Sun made the following statement: "By integrating Pirus Networks' technology into our existing end-to-end architecture, we are gaining the ability to create a unified storage network."

Pirus Networks overview

Pirus Networks was founded in Dec., 1999 with a goal of developing intelligent storage networking switches. The Pirus Storage Utility Switch (PSX-1000) is its first product in a proposed family of intelligent switches. The PSX-1000 combines storage and access services, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS with storage functionality including virtualization, security and point-in-time copy. The Pirus PSX-1000 is a switch-based abstraction that combines virtualization for block access with file serving as NAS controller. The PSX-1000 is a proprietary switch with embedded code for the virtualization and NAS. The solution supports heterogeneous server and storage attachment. The switch architecture is designed with full internal redundancy.

Evaluator Group comments:

Beginning with the announcement

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of its relationship with Hitachi, Sun has followed a strategy to increase the attachment rate within its own base, gain a deeper penetration in Sun's traditional markets and into key growth (vertical) markets and become a player in heterogeneous storage markets. With the introduction of its StorEdge 6900, Sun introduced a symmetrical pooling abstraction solution. The StorEdge 6900 is an integration of the Vicom SV Router with T3 storage arrays and Fibre Channel switches. This acquisition of Pirus Networks is yet another approach for storage abstraction. The two abstraction approaches are not complimentary. With this acquisition, it appears Sun will be integrating the Pirus technology as its primary solution for virtualization ending the life of the StorEdge 6900 solution.

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This was first published in October 2002

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