Sun Microsystems yesterday unveiled its vision for the next decade of network design at the company`s SunNetwork Conference in San Francisco.
Labelled the N1, or Network One, strategy, Sun says it will allow companies to focus on their business rather than on the underlying technology.
Announcing N1, chairman and CEO Scott McNealy said: "Networks are now roughly at the same stage as the telephone industry was when it still had switchboards and operators who manually connected calls. 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."
At the heart of the vision is the consolidation of widely distributed computing resources such as servers, storage and networking, enabling them to function as one entity.
The framework is focused on four distinct areas with time frameworks: the virtualisation of resources (2002-2003), service provisioning (2003-2004), policy automation (2004-2005) and, finally, accounting.
Phases one and two will see individual computers and network elements transformed into one collective pool. The service provisioning element will allow administrators to specify a business definition, such as e-banking, to the resource pools. The policy and accounting levels will ensure service levels are maintained and that network-wide resources are correctly managed.
"Sun`s US customers are saying that 70% of their IT budgets are spent on managing the complexity in their data centres and we expect this trend to be a similar one in SA going forward," says Stefano Mattiello, MD of Sun Microsystems SA.
"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 data centre."
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