Sun Rolls Out Data Center Design Services

Sun Microsystems (JAVA) has joined the growing crowd of companies providing data center design services to help companies improve the energy efficiency of their facilities. Sun today launched consulting services to help customers retrofit existing data centers and design new ones.

Sun is offering the consolidation of its own data center network into a state-of-the-art facility on its Santa Clara campus as a template for the process, which also may feature the use its Sun MD (Blackbox) data center container as a rapid expansion strategy for companies that have run out of space.

Sun is entering a field that has been a key focus for rivals IBM and HP, as well as many established specialists in mission-critical engineering. Data center design/build services have been a central thrust of IBM's Project Big Green,  which has seen IBM build more than 40 customer data centers around the world. Energy-efficient design was also a driver in HP's acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities last November.

"Sun has been driving datacenter innovation for more than 25 years with industry-leading technologies like the Solaris 10 Operating System, Java technology and energy-efficient CoolThreads processors," said Adolfo Hernandez, Senior Vice President, Global Services. "Combining our innovation with professional services expertise, we can partner with customers to help them not only decrease costs in their datacenter operations but also embrace emerging technologies, like virtualization and high-density computing,"

Sun's new services focus on three areas: strategy, design and build. Its approach will focus on developing data center space in modular design employing high density "pods," a concept that is also central to the design approach of firms like IBM and Digital Realty Trust (DLR).

Sun's new service strategy allows it to offer itself as a "one-stop shop" for data center customers, with the capability to support almost every element of a data center consolidationor expansion, providing everything from planning to design to hardware and virtualization expertise.