Sun touts smart storage

Sun will unveil its Honeycomb and Thumper storage projects today

Sun Microsystems has launched a number of new storage products that aim to put more intelligence into storing and retrieving information.

The enterprise IT vendor is scheduled to unveil the Honeycomb and Thumper projects as part of its quarterly product release cycle today.

The introductions indicate a shift in the storage industry, Sun claimed, as storage no longer has to focus on just preserving data, but requires an understanding of the kind of data that is stored.

This trend is caused by regulations around data retention, and the requirement to track who accessed certain information, as mandated by legislation such as HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley.

The storage landscape is further complicated by the rise of new services such as on-demand video, according to James Whitemore, chief marketing officer at Sun's Data Management Group.

"There is an understanding that the real problems that our customers face today cannot be solved if you continue to think about managing storage in the same way that you do today," he told vnunet.com.

"You have to start to think about how you lay out data as a shared network resource and how you store data which is captive to applications."

Sun is expected to integrate identity management into its StorageTek Enterprise Storage Manager software that will allow enterprises to monitor and report on who is accessing certain data.

The company is also preparing to launch a new technology dubbed Project Honeycomb that allows a storage application to retain and index metadata about unstructured data such as digital images or video.

The technology makes it easy to find a video through the use of keywords or the creation date. It is scheduled for availability later this summer.