Sun storage sales increase

Sun Microsystems has moved into fifth place on the IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, with $494 million in sales, reports Eweek.

The company recorded a 29.2% year-over-year increase in sales of its new Open Storage systems and a 7% share of the market.

Sun moves ahead of such international competitors as Hitachi Data Systems and Fujitsu and is outperforming the overall market, which only recorded a $6.9 billion increase in sales.

Web 2.0 companies are rediscovering direct-attached data storage (DAS) and are starting to add it as an extra layer for specific mission-critical applications, reports Eweek.

Despite all the talk about iSCSI, Fibre Channel and 4/10GB Ethernet connectivity, industry experts estimate that DAS still comprises about 70% of the entire data storage market.

The main reason for this upswing is its dependability, simplicity of use, better products and falling hardware prices, and because no hypervisor, virtual I/O or other augmentation is needed.

Adaptec is getting back into the ASIC production business with the $41 million acquisition of Aristos Logic, reports Eweek.

Aristos Logic makes multiprotocol RAID storage processor boards that are delivered in both software and silicon solutions and its ASIC development team has produced a scalable architecture that can be used in multiple product families.

Adaptec had dropped the board-making part of its business several years ago for reasons of economy and hired Intel to make them. With the acquisition of Aristos Logic, Adaptec regains the control of the ebb and flow of its circuit boards.