Sun Microsystems today announced a relationship with a key technology partner in its strategy to develop next generation ATCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture) blade server products based on the latest industry specifications from PICMG. Sun is collaborating with Pigeon Point Systems, an industry leading supplier of management sub-systems for PICMG standard blade technology, to create low cost, high performance ATCA blade server products to address next generation high throughput telecom services.
With this relationship, Sun is accelerating its development of the next generation Netra ATCA blade server product family, targeted for 2005 availability. Announced at ITU Telecom Asia in Sept, 2004, Sun plans to provide a complete ATCA blade server solution, supporting both UltraSPARC(R) and Opteron(R) blades as well as Solaris and CG Linux in the same system.
The ATCA specifications provide a high performance, high bandwidth telecom blade architecture, designed to meet the needs of next generation high-throughput telecom service applications, such as 3G wireless networks, unified media servers and voice over IP (VoIP) solutions.
“The ATCA standard is beginning to show significant momentum in the market, and Sun is taking an aggressive approach in developing and deploying a complete and advanced ATCA solution,” said Raju Penumatcha, VP Netra Systems and Networking (NSN), Sun Microsystems. “By partnering with industry leading technology partners like Pigeon Point Systems, Sun plans to deliver a low cost, highly reliable ATCA blade server offering that will meet the most stringent requirements of our network equipment provider customers.”
Sun’s current blade system management architecture, used in Sun’s Netra cPCI and cPSB blade servers , has saved customers significant time and money in deploying and maintaining highly reliable and manageable telecom blade products. The new ATCA platform will leverage the same blade system management architecture and software while providing a higher level of reliability and manageability for network equipment provider customers.
“NTT Comware has abundant experience and proven results in using telecom server products, including Sun’s Netra CT cPCI server, for many years,” stated a NTTComware Executive, a major Japanese network service provider. “We are excited about Sun’s new ATCA blade server products and plan to evaluate the products for developing our next generation network system platform.”
Pigeon Point Systems delivers fully customizable, off-the-shelf hardware and software components for industry leading blade system management.
Pigeon Point Systems will supply its IPM Sentry Board Management Reference (BMR) designs for incorporation into Sun’s ATCA blades and its IPM Sentry Shelf Management Mezzanine (ShMM) module as the core for the shelf level management of Sun’s systems. Both subsystems deliver demonstrated ATCA compliance and interoperability and will serve as an effective foundation for Sun’s highly reliable standards-based shelf and blade management technologies. Sun will port its standards-based blade management software, Managed Object Hierarchy (MOH), to Pigeon Point Systems’ IPM Sentry ShMM, creating a redundant, highly reliable ATCA system management architecture which reduces OAM development costs and time to market.
“Pigeon Point Systems’ IPM Sentry subsystems are created and backed by widely recognized experts and leaders in PICMG’s management standards. These subsystems are also designed to meet the high expectations of network equipment providers in other areas, such as reliability and field upgradeability,” said Mark Overgaard, President, Pigeon Point Systems. “We are delighted to be collaborating closely with Sun to bring the latest standards-based management subsystems technologies to Sun’s ATCA blade server products to meet the most demanding customer requirements.”
About Pigeon Point Systems
Pigeon Point Systems (PPS) provides products and services that enable cost-effective management of standards-based platformsùincluding AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC (AMC), CompactTCA and CompactPCIùand is a leader in the definition of those platforms. With its IPM Sentry shelf management products, PPS offers the first shelf management building blocks that compatibly support AdvancedTCA and CompactPCI, with similar support for CompactTCA to come. The IPM Sentry board management productsùalso the first off-the-shelf offerings in the industryùenable compact, cost-effective management subsystems for boards and other FRUs, including AMC carriers and AMCs. PPS is a leader in the AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC and CompactTCA subcommittees and is active in many other technical subcommittees of PICMG. For more information about PPS, visit their web site at www.pigeonpoint.com or call their headquarters at 831-438-1565.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Netra, and Solaris are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Opteron is a trademark or registered trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. in the United States and other countries.