Well, it looks like Sun are going ahead with
their ubiquitous computing plans without Mithril.
Greg
Reuters Market News
Sun Micro Outlines Roadmap for Managing Networks
Friday September 20, 5:00 am ET
By Peter Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. on Thursday
said it would create in a few years a network environment that will be as
straightforward to handle as a single machine, a strategy it calls N1.
It laid out a road map for a new layer of intelligent software and systems that will meld
unwieldy networks into easy-to-use systems, a goal similar to those of most rivals
making computers which manage networks.
EMC Corp. announced this week software aimed at allowing users to manage storage
resources as a pool. Hewlett-Packard Co has a Utility Data Center, designed for
broader management. International Business Machines Corp's project eLiza is working
to make computers "self-healing" when systems break.
"Applications still have to run zeroes and ones on some computing engine but the
whole idea behind N1 is you stop thinking about that. You don't think about what box
it is running on," Sun Vice President Steve MacKay, head of the N1 program, said in an
interview on the sidelines of a Sun user conference.
Many industry executives see computer power eventually being sold like power or
water, as a utility that can be turned on or off, in whatever volume one wants whenever
needed.
For that to happen computers must be tied together seamlessly, rather than cobbling
them together with tenuous links, as most networks do today, experts say. There are
still major barriers, though, such as communications standards for machines from
different vendors to interoperate closely.
Sun promised to deliver a "virtualization engine" that would let administrators look at
their entire network as a pool by the end of the year. Network administrators today
often have no automatic system to report what is in the network.
"It'll tell you what you have and how it is laid out," promised MacKay
The second stage, beginning in 2003, would allow users to identify a service, such as
online banking, and allocate resources for them with a few clicks, Sun said.
Finally, in 2004, Sun's software should allow networks to change uses of resources on
the fly in response to changing needs, such as a bank assuring quicker online response
time for priority users, the company said.