Sun Microsystems has launched a new business unit to sell its Sparc processors, a return to an idea it had dropped years ago.
David Yen, currently executive vice president of storage but previously in charge of Sun's Sparc work, will lead the new group and retain his executive VP status, the company said on Thursday. Jon Benson, a vice president of engineering who joined Sun through its acquisition of Storage Technology in 2005, is the new executive VP of storage.
The move is the latest rejiggering of the US-based company's hardware business. In the 1990s, the company's Sun Microelectronics unit sold its chips internally to Sun itself and externally to others that built servers around them, but the company eventually retrenched so it was the sole customer of its Sparc chips.
The move reflects the philosophy of Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, who enjoys seeing Sun technology used in conjunction with competitors' products. For example, the company often gives higher commissions to salespeople who sell Sun's Solaris operating system for use on rivals' servers than for use on its own machines, and the company has embraced other operating systems on its own servers.
"Sun's innovations have value and appeal beyond our own servers and storage products," Schwartz said in a statement. "As with our software, decoupling our silicon from a strict reliance on Sun's systems raises our profile and opportunity globally."
Establishing the Sparc group as separate is designed in part to assure outside buyers that Sun itself won't have an inside advantage, Sun said.
Sun has returned to revenue growth and profitability after years of post-dot-com financial struggles. The company still faces IBM and Hewlett-Packard as strong server competitors, though, and Tuesday's move indicates the company still is working on finding the right organisational structure and strategy.
The Sparc group remained separate for some years after Sun stopped selling the chips externally. But in 2004, shortly after Schwartz was promoted to chief operating officer, he merged the Sparc chip group led by Yen with the Sparc server group, putting Yen in charge. After Schwartz was named chief executive, he put the entire server group under John Fowler, who earlier had led just the x86 server business, and moved Yen to storage.
Part of Sun's restored fortunes came because its UltraSparc IV+ systems have enjoyed greater than expected sales at the same time that new products using the UltraSparc T1 "Niagara" processor now supply significant revenue. The company plans to release Niagara 2 systems in the second half of 2007 and higher-end cousins using the "Rock" chip in the second half of 2008.
Texas Instruments builds Sun's chips. Fujitsu also designs and builds its own Sparc chips, and it and Sun will jointly sell a new generation in servers called the Advanced Product Line beginning the first half of 2007.
Another change coming with the new shift is that the new Sun Fire X4500 "Thumper" system, which combines dual AMD Athlon processors with as much as 24 terabytes of storage in a compact chassis, is being moved out of the storage group and into the server group.
