Sun versus HP: which one's your money on?

"Today is about much more than just new products. We're taking a bet on the next five years."

Speaking at the New York launch of Sun Microsystems' Ultrasparc III processor, chief operating officer Ed Zander was doing his best to stand out in the sometimes staid world of IT as a bit of a risk taker. But to anyone who was at the launch of Hewlett Packard's (HP's) Superdome Unix server two weeks before, the speech sounded very familiar.

"We have placed a bet on the future of computing. This is a watershed day for HP," declared chief executive Carly Fiorina at the event, which was also held in New York.

As rivals in the highly competitive Unix server market, it's no surprise to hear that HP and Sun have a similar approach when it comes to marketing their wares. Speeches aside, however, if you're trying to decide which Unix platform to bet on, there is a fundamental difference between the two firms. HP is betting the farm on providing watertight services for customers, while Sun has more of a technology focus, believing that IT managers want fantastic networking capabilities to augment any servers they buy.

Over the next nine months, Sun will introduce a range of Solaris-based Unix machines based on its 64bit UltraSparc III chip. These will initially come in at the low end, starting with a new workstation, the Sun Blade 1000, and a workgroup server, the Sun Fire 280R. Sun intends to announce subsequent new servers every quarter, leading up to a replacement for its top-of-the-range E10000 and a new, even larger system reputed to be capable of supporting more than 100 processors.

But according to Zander, technology itself is a secondary issue. The important thing is how it will work with everything else. "We don't believe the big, monolithic, mainframe-style architecture is the future. It's the network architecture," he said.

The network is the future
To back up this concept, Sun will ship new Grid Engine software on each of its UltraSparc III servers, although it will also be available from the web and to the open source community.

Grid Engine is system management software that can balance resources and share workloads between different servers and workstations on a corporate network. This means that if a given machine does not have the capacity to process a job, Grid Engine will locate spare system capacity elsewhere and seamlessly transfer the job over. Network bandwidth is, therefore, exploited in a similar way to how an individual machine's system bus distributes workloads across processors.

"The Grid Engine is about reaching beyond the box. It's not peer-to-peer. It's still centrally administered, but it's about using the network to hook together resources," said Sun's chief technology officer Greg Papadopoulus.

Such a concept will be difficult to deliver on, especially given Sun's approach to services, but the supplier believes it can leave this part of the equation to its friends.

"I don't get asked about transaction processing speeds any more - it's a different buying game now," said Zander. "Sun is a firm believer in being a products and technology-focused company. We have no intention of following a services route like HP is with PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC]. We're going to keep doing what we do best and work with consultants and systems integrators."

In contrast, at Superdome's launch two weeks back, Fiorina announced that HP intends to introduce a new payment model. The aim is to sell IT capacity as a metered, pay-as-you-use service in the same way that utilities companies charge consumers for using gas and electricity. Central to achieving this aim is HP's proposed £14bn purchase of PwC's consulting business.

IBM's business model is similarly services-oriented: its Global Services group has become the world's largest IT consulting organisation, and represents Big Blue's most important source of revenue. Likewise, the main reason for Compaq's purchase of Digital Equipment was to get its hands on a global consulting business.

But John Shoemaker, executive vice president of Sun's systems products group, said: "We don't believe the answer is to create a global systems integration organisation. We prefer to make alliances with partners such as Andersen Consulting. When companies try to be all things to all men, they get into trouble."

The Net Effect
Chris Ingle, an associate at research company IDC, said: "Sun wants to develop an amorphous data centre, [and] this seems to be what the Net Effect is about. If it works, it could be very effective. However, Sun's consulting business is really only about installation. But its partner management is very strong, and it leaves a lot of services to its partners."

"Sun has talked about taking on IBM and HP, but it doesn't have an equivalent to IBM Global Services or PwC," he added. "I can't see Sun selling directly against HP and IBM without services."

But while Sun and HP tell the world where they are placing their bets, the cards are ultimately in the hands of users. Do you buy into the services model and plump for HP? Or focus on the technology model and go for Sun and one of its services partners that can deliver on its architectural plan?

As Zander said: "It's always a tough sell. You have to let the customers decide."

What exactly is Sun launching?

Sun has started shipping its second-generation 64bit microprocessor - the Ultrasparc III - which includes 29 million transistors and a 9.6Gbps address bus. The supplier claims that copper interconnect technology will enable the chip to scale up to 1.5Ghz and is positioning it as a robust 'engine' for ebusiness systems.

The processor will be incorporated into Sun's product family, which ranges from workstations to high-end servers, over the next six to nine months, with low-end offerings already available.

At the launch itself, Sun unveiled two systems based on UltraSparc III, both of which provide twice the performance of previous products:

• A high-end workstation - the Sun Blade 1000 - comes in two versions, one with a 750Mhz and the other with a 900Mhz processor. It starts at about $10,000
• A special entry-level Sun Blade 1000 workstation, based on a 600Mhz Ultrasparc III, will be sold at auction via the web with no minimum bid required
• Sun also launched the Sun Fire 280R server, which is based on a 750Mhz chip and runs Solaris 8. Its memory capacity can be expanded to 8Gb and it was positioned as a web/ecommerce gateway server. Prices start at $10,000