Sun asks industry to back N1

Sun Microsystems will need to seek a little help from its friends to make its ambitious N1 plan succeed, Chief Executive Scott McNealy said on Monday.

The company's N1 plan is designed so administrators can get more use out of existing hardware by sharing jobs across several systems. N1 will automate tasks that are often performed by hand, the company has said.

Sun needs to make sure that equipment from competitors such as IBM and others will fit seamlessly into the N1 plan, McNealy said at a news conference following his keynote address at the Comdex Fall 2002 trade show in Las Vegas.

Those companies could include existing Sun N1 partners, such as Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, EDS and Deloitte Consulting - all "integrators" that can match Sun's technology with a customer's computing infrastructure.

"We will allow integrators to build the connectors to non-Sun environments," McNealy said, making assurances that technology needed for N1 will be available. "We'll make it happen, whether we do it or the (computer reseller) channel does it, or a third-party does it."

Sun has pitched its N1 plan as a way for customers to squeeze more use out of existing computers, many of which sit idle much of the time in corporate data centres.

N1 competes with other computing efforts, such as IBM's autonomic computing plan and Hewlett-Packard's Utility Data Center plan. The N1 project is based on open standards, McNealy said.

Sun recently acquired Terraspring and Pirus Networks to help boost its N1 efforts. Software from both companies is used to help separate computing processes from the particulars of the server or storage system used.

This layer of "virtualisation" makes it easier, for example, to allocate more processing power or reduce storage capacity as demands from computing jobs fluctuate.

Stephen Shankland writes for News.com