Sun's Amber Road traffic picks up

Sun looks to have a raging product success on its hand with 800 plus Open Storage 7000 sales in the five months since its launch, making it the fastest ever ramping product in Sun's storage product portfolio. It's updated the product as well. Known as Amber Road, the Open Storage 7000 product combines an open source system and …

[Anonymous Coward]

This is impossible!

This can't be true! Matt Bryant said that Amber Road has nothing going for it over the much better NetApp... This article is pure FUD!!!! Doesn't this thing run OpenSlowaris? This just can't possible be true!!!

Obviously those 800 sales could not have gone to HP shops and HP customers are much too intelligent to buy inferior storage!!! Wait, wait, wait... 800 sales in the first 5 months. That's really not that many, right? Not as many as NetApp sells. So that means that the number is laughable, right? Is that a lot? Hmmm...

This is an outrage!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun Product??

Maybe Oracle will make money from it.

[Matt Bryant]

RE: This is impossible!

800 sales != enough cash to even save the Sun storage bizz, let alone the rest of Sun. Even if the current buy-out by Oracle wasn't ongoing, the profits from Amber Road still wouldn't be enough to stop Ponytail hawking the company to all comers, and still not enough to drive the price up to even a tenth of Sun's $200bn value of only nine years ago.

But if it gives the Sunshiners a moment of happiness that they have managed to save the ship's cat while the rest of the ship has sunk beneath the waves then I suggest we leave them to gloat in the corner. After all, the reality of the larger picture has been so much of a disaster for their confidence, it would be mean to point out the irrellevance of such a tiny success. So I don't want anyone posting and reminding them how many NetApp units went out in that period, or how many ProLiant Storage Servers were sold, or even the number of Dell Equilogic boxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

Great potential

We have recently got one of the Amber Road units in response to a tender and it was a clear winner in every respect - except being new and unproven.

It has the attraction of being offered with all of the software features thrown in, no nasty financial surprises when you want another feature/protocol. Even adding 10G Ethernet was not too painfully expensive. Also ZFS has file checksums, a great additional integrity check that is not that common, and the Analytics feature is just great!

It worked out at around half the cost per TB to expand it compared to the only realistic competitors in our case. Also being an 'open' system you don't get royally screwed for the price of disks, should you need to add more.

However (and this is why posted AC), our system is not quite working right yet in terms of cluster support but it is getting there.

Still, it is fast, capricious and we could actually afford it! In today's climate that counts for something.

[Dunstan Vavasour]

800 Sales

No, Matt's absolutely right, and the sales target is not 800 units. The key to Amber Road's success is that it canibalises sales from the competition as well as Sun's low end products, and it would appear to have *started* on this quest. The success or failure of this series will be viewed over many years, this is only its beginning, but a promising beginning all the same.

[David Halko]

Good for SUN!

Good for SUN!

It is good to see another new competitor in this field that is doing reasonably well with a product launch!

As far as canibalising sales from Sun's low end products, television stations and video sharing web sites (which had not used SUN low end products before) is an indication that this may not be the case. This looks like new business.

SUN is doing well with CoolThreads and now OpenStorage - let's see if they can do another product launch well (during a global recession) in the next couple of quarters (T3 or RocK?)

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Good for SUN!

What? You heard Matt!!! This is irrelevant. Stop thinking otherwise!

Matt Bryant says that 800 units in the first 5 months is laughable, so it must be true.

Matt Bryant says that NetApp sells more units in one month than Sun sells all year.

Matt Bryant says that Sun is terrible in all other respects, so who cares about this one

little piece of positive news. I mean, there is nothing positive about this!!!

Matt Bryant says that Amber Road really has no value to anyone with a clue. The guy that has one above must not have a clue!!!

Matt Bryant says that NetApp could have bought Sun, but Sun had nothing worth buying. The same goes for HP!

Matt Bryant says that Sun just stole ZFS from NetApp anyway, so after NetApp finishes suing Oracle, there will be no Amber Road. Who cares that the judge has thrown out most of NetApps patents as junk and NetApp was forced to move the case from Texas to California where both companies actually reside...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure comedy

Matt - do you actually realise your anti-Sun rants are now fast becoming pure comedy ?

I'm sure soon that the HP PR team and/or their legal team will jump on some of the allegations you keep making as it's obvious you're beginning to embarrass your employers.

Right now however, you're rapidly becoming the best Sun sales person out there as you're indirectly validating every Sun product by going completely over the top - keep it up !

[Sikas Aparat]

@AC "Great potential"

"capricious"?

A Freudian slip for "capacious"?

[Matt Bryant]

Whatever

* I. FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.

* IX. THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, and all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.

* XXIX. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.[4]

So there

[Jonathan Schwatrz]

I AM GOD!

Peasants!

I am OUTRAGED that one of the Faithful should mention God and NOT state that I am The Only God! Know that Amber Road is a success that will grow and grow purely because I GAVE BIRTH TO IT in a miracle of Immaculate Conception. Pay no heed to the rumours that Fallen Angel McNealy was the Father and I played Mommie. Since I have taken it upon Myself to take the reformed sinner Larry Ellison under My Guidance, so he can turn his faltering company around and make it the outstanding success that I have made Sun, soon the whole World will have an Amber Road system, three Rock servers, and unlimited MySQL licences, and that's just in the bedroom! As soon as I have indoctrinated Saint Larry in the correct way to run a software business, and as soon as he has grown a fittingly similar ponytail, I will send him out to do My Bidding! Rise up, Sunshiners, your time is now! Now kiss my feet in reverance or burn in RHell.

Yours bombasticly,

Jonathan I Schwartz.

[Matt Bryant]

Re Sunshiners.

RE: Dunstan Vavasour - thanks, but I think these may actually be new sales rather than cannibalisation. After all, Sun doesn't really have any prior low-end storage to cannibalise. Hilarious that Sun should finally get round to diversifying into a relatively new area only about fifteen years after the other vendors, and about ten years too late to have any benefit to Sun.

RE: David Halko - shocking, I actually have to agree with Novatose on something! These must be new sales rather than cannibalisation, seeing as Sun is about fifteen years behind the other storage server/appliance vendors. Just imagine what could have been if McNeedy and Ponytail had got over their delusions about Slowaris on SPARC earlier. Ah well, too late now, the only benefit will be that Ellison will be able to spend the meager profits on new uniforms for his yatch crew.

RE: re: Good for SUN!

And that NetApp suit hasn't gone away, despite all your wishful bluster. And now, Oracle are in the driving seat, with NetApp being a major storage partner for them - much more major than the tiny Sun storage bizz. Maybe Larry will make it a condition of Sun's surrender that they also have to settle the NetApp case before the deal goes through. Now that would be funny!

RE: Pure comedy

Well, one good laugh does deserve another, and you Sunshiners have presented years of tragi-comedy worthy of the worst daytime soap. Try to keep laughing whilst your Solaris-based career grinds to a halt. And as for your fixation on hp, how many times have I already told you Sunshiners I don't work for hp. Just because you guys astroturf like crazy, don't paint us all with that brush. You'll find it's not a good thing to do to potential customers. What am I saying - Sunshiners don't have to worry about customers anymore, they've either already jumped the sinking ship or soon will! I'm happy to say my appraisal to the board of three years ago that Sun were too unpredictable an entity to be any part of our longterm IT startegy has not only been proven correct, but also killed any chance of any Sun sales into our business. With that in mind I suppose you can toss all the insults at me you like. Please try and add an element of humour, though. Happy tossing, Snnshiner (why does "tossing" and "Sunshiner" seem to be a natural association?)!

RE: Whatever

The fake Matt Bryant is obviously having a hard time coping with the Sunset. Mind you, that is the most accurate and eloquent post ever from a Sunshiner. Of course, that may be because, like the only good bits out of Sun's product range, it wasn't the original work of a Sunshiner.

/Keep trying, Sunshiners, you only have a few months more left before the final Sunset!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re: Sunshiners.

YES!!! There he is!!! Thanks for all of your eloquent speeches about all things Sun MB!!! What would we ever do without your wit and knowledge?

[Matt Bryant]

RE: Re: Re: Sunshiners.

Well, someone has to set the Sunshiners straight. That level of self-delusion just can't be healthy in the long term.

As a comparrison, consider a story from one of my colleagues in another office. She is very religeous, and can't pass up any opportunity to inform all that God created the Earcth in seven days (no, not Schwartz, the other God). At first, in typical British fashion, the rest of the office took pains to avoid upsetting her - they cautioned staff not to use blasphemy in her presence, frowned on anyone trying to suggest science and the bible might contradict each other, and generally let her sail on in her annoyingness. Then, she really started up on the Intelligent Design trip. For a while they all just tried to ignore her, but she got so bad that the other day my colleague sat her down and went through Darwin, some basic science, and then showed her the BBC news item on the Indonesian "Hobbits" and how they show evolution in action. At the end, she shook her head and said; "Those aren't people, they're aliens, and the scientists are hiding that from us!"

You Sunshiners are just like our religeous colleague - probably quite clever, maybe good at your jobs, but just living under a complete fantasy. For years you have been allowed to run around shouting everyone down with your Sunshine, and now that your fantasy world is collapsing you're willing to believe anything to avoid accepting the truth.

[David Halko]

matt bryant the religious one shouting down sunshiners

matt bryant ~~~ shouting everyone down with your Sunshine

shouting down the poor sun shiners - hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Re: Re: Sunshiners.

Er, Matt? Knock Knock, anyone in there?

Do you re-read your posts & think before you post a comment? Shall I return you to any one of your numerous sermons from the good book of HP advertising, chapter drivel, psalm FUD and you might recognise your posts + your comments above as the dictionary definition of hypocrisy.

Your probably clever enough to get by, maybe even good at your job and for years you appear to run around shouting everyone down with your fantasy world. However, the world isn't collapsing Matt so why don't you accept the truth : Oracle just bought Sun and it doesn't look like the Sun is about to set (or any other of your canned catch-phrases)

In fact it looks like they are about to start doing remarkably well thank you very much!

You appear to bethe one in a fantasy Mr Bryant!

[Matt Bryant]

RE: RE: Re: Re: Sunshiners.

".....Shall I return you to any one of your numerous sermons from the good book of HP advertising, chapter drivel, psalm FUD...." Please return us to any advertising, sales FUD or otherwise as long as it's not Sun's, that's already been well posted here by the other Sunshiners. But I'm guessing you only have the Sun FUD to hand, and going and getting anything from the other vendors would involve what would be for you a novel experience in uncharted waters.

"....In fact it looks like they are about to start doing remarkably well thank you very much!..." Really, can you actually see through that Sunshiner Blindfold™? I'm guessing you also thought there was nothing wrong at Sun before the news leaked out that Sun was up for sale? And I'm betting you have posted here in the last year that Sun's future was to dominate the server business, kill Itanium, gut IBM's Power bizz, slay the Beast of Redmond, and convert all Linux users to The True Way of Slowaris x86, etc, etc. Looks like you're nil-for-nil so far! Care to reconsider the fantasy angle?

/who needs Paramount Comedy when we have the Sunshiners!