N1: The IT roadmap of the future

Sun Microsystems has unveiled N1 (Network 1), its vision and roadmap for the next decade of network system design. N1 is a new category of computing that will enable companies to focus on their business, not the underlying technology.

"Networks are now roughly at the same stage as the telephone industry was when it still had switchboards and operators who manually connected calls," says Scott McNealy, chairman, president and CEO of Sun Microsystems. McNealy was speaking on the second day of the first annual SunNetwork Conference held in San Francisco, USA.

"If we don't develop a system that scales better than that - the equivalent of automatic switching - we'll have to train everyone under the age of 30 to work as a system administrator. The good news is, we've seen this problem coming for some time and N1 is the best solution."

N1 rethinks the architecture of the entire datacentre, by aggregating widely distributed computing resources (servers, storage and networking), enabling them to function as one powerful entity.

Comments Stefano Mattiello, managing director of Sun Microsystems SA: "Sun's US customers are saying that 70% of their IT budgets are spent on managing the complexity in their datacentres and we expect this trend to be a similar one in SA going forward.

"N1 is focused on reducing that number and allowing companies to use their resources on value-add projects. This roadmap is an evolution of a system that will have a revolutionary affect on the datacentre."

The N1 architecture is divided into four distinct areas that have a collective effect on traditional IT infrastructures, transforming them into more efficient models of computing.

1. Virtualisation of resources (2002 - 2003)
2. Service provisioning (2003 - 2004)
3. Policy automation (2004 - 2005)
4. Accounting

The first phase provides the basic infrastructure for N1. Here, individual computers, network elements, and storage systems will be transformed into an aggregated pool of resources.

While during service provisioning, administrators can specify the business definition for a service, such as e-banking, and N1 then takes care of provisioning the resources required from the virtual computer created in phase one.

Finally, the policy automation process sees application service level objectives automatically maintained by N1. Policies that reflect business requirements and priorities are then used to manage applications and their required network-wide resources.

For example, the e-banking set-up in phase two, can be configured to give priority access to 'VIP' clients.

Sun Services will assist customers in creating the system architectures required to realise the N1 vision.

The architecture will also be delivered to customers over time through strategic relationships with network infrastructure providers such as Cisco, ISVs such as Oracle, SAP and PeopleSoft.