Sun makes telecoms push

NEWS Sun Microsystems is to make a major push into the telecoms sector, an area which already accounts for about 20 per cent of its $10bn annual turnover. The Unix-based systems vendor said it will take on rivals such as Stratus, owned by networking company Ascend, and Tandem, which is now part of Compaq. Terry Maloney, Sun UK business development manager, said: "What we're talking about is a services-driven network vision. This is not a Sun product, but an industry goal, and Sun is in a position to provide it." He said customers - including telcos and companies that sell to telcos - will increasingly look to vendors who concentrate on services over infrastructure, open systems over proprietary systems, and outsourcing and alliances as ways to avoid doing all development in-house. Graham Royle, chief systems engineer at Brite, which provides voicemail, prepay, and Intelligent Networks (IN) services to customers such as Cellnet, said: "We focus on value-added services in telecoms, and we can say that working with Sun has proved easy." As part of its assault, Sun will roll out new servers - starting with the Signalling System 7-compliant Netra ft 1800 - and ship Java-enabled network management software. It will also introduce an initiative called Jain, which it describes as the marriage of IP (Internet Protocol) and IN using Java. Sun said the Netra ft 1800 provides 99.999 per cent uptime, and comes with Netra A1000/D1000 storage systems. However, Dave Russell, product marketing manager Nonstop Himalaya at Compaq, commented: "This is something we do already. We have big services contracts with the major telcos." He dismissed claims that Sun will benefit from a Compaq which has had to digest two big acquisitions in the form of Digital and Tandem. "The customer only sees and a single point of contact," said Russell. "Compaq, Digital and Tandem all came together with different strengths, and when it comes to people talking about problems integrating the companies, our results speak for themselves."