Sun targets Microsoft in ASP market

Sun Microsystems has beefed up its offerings for application service providers with the launch of a range of low-end servers that it hopes will smash the dominance of Windows- and Linux-based Intel systems.

The products include two server appliances, the Sun Cobalt RaQ XTR and CacheRaQ 4, which are based on the systems it inherited from the acquisition of appliance vendor Cobalt.

The RaQ XTR packages the hardware, software, database and development tools required to implement web applications, while the CacheRaQ 4, based on Sun Cobalt InstaCache technology, includes web caching equipment.

President and chief operating officer Ed Zander described the products as a "real fastball down the middle", and said the company has set its sights on the dominance of the so-called Wintel (Windows and Intel) duopoly in the platform market.

"We will go after all of those customers that have been buying Wintel and are unhappy with NT's scalability and reliability," he said. "We are putting the squeeze on Wintel-Lintel [Linux-Intel] in this multibillion dollar market."

Sun also rolled out extensions to its Sun Netra rack-based thin servers, including a sub-$1000 version, the Netra X1, aimed at handling email transactions, web hosting and voice-over-IP gateways.

Also introduced was the next generation of its carrier-grade Netra T1 thin server as well as a compact, carrier-grade PCI system expander, the Netra E1, for more demanding applications.

All the new Netra machines store their identity on a small removable card allowing administrators to unplug a card from a broken server and move it to a functioning one.