NEWS BRIEFS
Palo Alto, CA — Based on design input from its Service Provider (SP) customers, Sun Microsystems, Inc., today introduced the Netra t1 carrier-grade server, an ultra-slim system that allows SPs to stack up to four times more servers in a rack than competitive systems. A mere 1.75 inches (or 1U) in height, the new system fulfills the special requirements of the fast-growing SP market with features such as a slim form factor that lets up to 40 units be stacked in a single 19-inch rack, so that SPs can more easily and cost-effectively dedicate separate systems to individual customers or different infrastructure applications.
Nancy Faigen, president and CEO of DIGEX, said, “The Netra t1 represents the next generation of Sun servers that allow DIGEX to provide an even greater level of service to our customers. The combination of Netra’s size and advanced lights-out management features are especially important when running thousands of servers in a mission-critical environment.”
John Puckett, vice president and general manager of Network Centric Solutions, GTE Internetworking, added, “Sun has listened to us. Clearly, the new performance and physical parameters of the Netra t1 server are a major step towards meeting many of our current and future business goals. The design certainly has the features that our customers are asking for today.”
The Netra t1 server’s unique form factor means SPs can stack twice as many in a 19-inch rack as comparable systems from HP, nearly three times as many as from Compaq, and four times as many as from Dell. In addition, the Netra t1 server includes a host of features — including lights-out management, front and rear indicator lights and removable host ID — that address the installation and management challenges SPs face in their work environments. These features all are standard, included in the system’s affordable, sub-$5K price.
Sun already is a leading platform provider to the SP market — more than 80 percent of the Internet backbone traffic and 15 of the 20 top SPs run on Sun. The new Netra t1 server is intended to significantly increase Sun’s share of this market. It also will drive Sun’s penetration into the overall entry-level server market, at the expense of competitors Compaq, HP and IBM. Sun currently holds an 11 percent share of the $35 billion entry-level server market — which is predicted by IDC to reach $55 billion by 2002 — and is expected to emerge as a leader in this segment.
“The Netra t1 server is a cornerstone of Sun’s strategy for SPs. We are committed to lead this market through innovation and product excellence, which means constantly reinventing ourselves to meet the demands and the scrutiny of a very aggressive marketplace,” said Neil Knox, vice president and general manager, Sun Network Systems. “We spent a lot of time with our SP customers to understand the important details about how they work in order to build a server that would make their lives as easy as possible. When we went back to those customers with plans for the Netra t1 server and they said, ‘we couldn’t have designed a better server ourselves,’ we knew we hit a home run.”
For more information visit http://www.sun.com
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