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Sun Announces Blade/Visualization
Products; Intel/RackSaver Notch Pixar Win
By Charles King
Sun Microsystems this week introduced new product
and service offerings, including the Sun Fire V1280, the company’s first
blade server system. The initial V1280 configuration is based on 900 MHz
UltraSPARC III processors, supports up to 96GB of memory, and features the
SunONE software stack. Sun described the V1280 as a secure, scalable, and
cost-effective platform for Wintel server consolidation and mainframe
rehosting, and noted that an x86-based configuration would be introduced
later this year. The Sun Fire V1280 is available immediately with a starting
price of $79,995. Sun also announced the Sun Fire V880z visualization
workgroup system, which features Sun’s new XVR-4000 graphics accelerator for
3D rendering applications. The base configuration of the V880z with a single
graphics accelerator includes two 900 MHz UltraSPARC III processors, 4GB
memory and six 73GB FCAL disk drives, and is currently available starting at
$64,995. In an unrelated announcement, Pixar Animation Studios, the creators
of “Monsters, Inc.,” announced that it is working with Intel and RackSaver to
create a new RenderFarm installation for digital animation production to
replace the company’s Sun Microsystems-based rendering installation. The new
RenderFarm will consist of 1,024 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon processors housed in
eight new RackSaver systems running Pixar’s RenderMan software, and features
two terabytes of memory and 60TB of disk space. Pixar is using the system to
produce films scheduled for release in 2004.
At first glance, the Sun and Pixar announcements
seem only marginally related but they point to trends in the graphics and
larger server markets that are worth considering. On Sun’s side of the
street, the company’s new blade and visualization offerings provide evidence
of Sun’s efforts to stimulate sales in a down market. While some might fault
the V1280 as a relative late-comer to the blade party, we would point out
that the market for 64-bit blade solutions is hardly set in concrete. That
said, we have some quibbles about Sun’s positioning
of the V1280 as yet another mainframe rehosting solution. Since Sun’s
acquisition of Critical Path’s rehosting solutions in 2001, the company has
touted a variety of products (including the high-end Star Cat 15k and mid-range
Sun Fire servers) as lifesavers for what it regards as beleaguered mainframe
(i.e., IBM) customers, without much notable success. So now Sun is pitching
the blade mainframe. Spare us, please. In all, the Sun Fire V880z seems a
more interesting solution. It complements Sun’s history in the technical
workstation market, and is being positioned to seize market share from SGI’s
Infinite Reality solutions. The real question is just how the V880z will
impact a rapidly shifting high-end graphics market. While RISC-based servers
still largely rule the roost in high-end industrial 3D rendering
applications, they are rapidly being supplanted in other areas by
commodity-based solutions.
Which brings us to Pixar. By any measure, the
company’s decision to replace its aging Sun rendering facility with a rival
product would be a blow, but to drop Sun’s signature SPARC/Solaris
technologies for a 32-bit Xeon-based solution adds salt to a nasty wound. The
fact of the matter is, though, that in the gaming and special effects market,
the commodity transition has been evident for some time. Last July,
Industrial Light and Magic replaced 600 SGI rendering workstations with
Pentium4-based machines. Additionally, the dramatic shift toward
commodity-based cluster solutions across a range of HPC, supercomputing, and
other high-end applications is helping to push those technologies further
into the mainstream commercial market. So Pixar’s decision to go with Xeon is
hardly a surprise, but it is interesting to speculate just how close Intel is
to the heels of its RISC competitors. Typically, the cost-conscious
entertainment industry leads the way in getting the biggest bang for the
bucks they invest in cutting edge technologies. While RISC may remain the
architecture of choice for many industrial visualization applications, we
expect their area of influence is likely to erode over time. Remember that a
mere two years ago the idea that Pentium-based systems could replace SGI
workstations would have been considered sheer techno-lunacy. Not today.
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Hide and Seek
By Jim Balderston
Both MSN and Yahoo! are moving to offer major
upgrades to their search functions. MSN announced that it has speeded up
search times and search results relevance, and now includes a spell checker
that helps people make sure they have entered their search terms accurately.
Yahoo! is expected to unveil new search capabilities at its analysts’
conference later this year, noting that it will use some of the technology
the company acquired when it bought Inktomi, one of the first of the
Internet’s high-powered search engines. Both companies plan to continue
upgrading their search algorithms as they try and capture some of the market —
and mind — share owned by search giant Google.
IT is logical enough to assume that MSN’s and
Yahoo’s interest in improved search function has something to do with
Google’s success, not just as a brand but as a money-making concern. Google
has weathered the Internet downturn nicely, thank you very much, by selling
ranked search results that it displays next to those generated by its search
engine. A good clean strategy, no doubt, as the advertiser is placed in front
of the consumer offering something that in all likelihood is related to the
very thing consumer seeks in the first place. Simple, and perhaps, sublime.
While those companies chasing Google hope to muscle
in on some of its market, we see other consequences of the ever-improving
search capabilities presented to Internet users of all stripes. Essentially,
people have developed higher and higher expectations of finding the information
they are looking for and doing so in a reasonable and timely fashion. We
suspect the rising expectation curve would look very similar to those of not
so long ago when a sudden increase in bandwidth to the end user created whole
new levels of expectations and dissatisfaction when the new access speed was
suddenly not available. Such issues, we suspect, could become a major
sticking point for vendors of IT products and services who offer information
about their products. As users’ expectation levels of finding exact bits of
information rise, so too must vendors’ abilities to deliver precise
information. In an economy that still is trudging along in the doldrums,
penny pinching customers will search long and hard to find offerings that fit
their budgets and existing needs; finding the information that tells them if
product A or product B better suits their needs will be a key spark for those
purchasing decisions. Not only will searchers know what they can find, they
will also be keenly aware of what information is not available. Vendors that
fail to provide full and comprehensive product and service data may find
themselves knocked off prospective vendor lists by IT managers who will
increasingly expect and demand to find the information from vendors in an
easy to navigate and find fashion. Information not available in that
condition, we suspect, will raise a red flag (or stop sign) in many
prospective buyers’ minds, to wit: what are these guys trying to hide?
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Just the PACS, Ma’am: IBM and EMC Both
Announce Storage Solutions for Healthcare
By Charles King
IBM and Siemens have announced a new methodology for
delivering Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) data including
CT-Scans, MRIs, and mammography data in hospital
settings by combining Siemens SIENET Integrated Radiology Suite with IBM’s
new Management Storage Service. The new service is an “on demand” solution
that delivers storage capacity as hospitals require it via secure Internet
connections, and consists of IBM’s Shark storage systems and Tivoli
management software. In a series of unrelated announcements, EMC showcased a
variety of storage solutions aimed at aiding the transition of PACS data into
complete Electronic Patient Records (EPR) applications. EMC promoted its
automated networked storage solutions for PACS as an integrated means for
collecting, storing, and managing patient information across the total data
lifecycle from short-term live images to long-term archive images. As part of
this effort, EMC and Eastman Kodak announced plans to integrate Kodak
DirectView PACS solutions with EMC’s Symmetrix 8000 series and CLARiiON CX400
and CX600 products. In a separate announcement, EMC said Rogers Medical
Intelligence Solutions (RMIS) has implemented an automated networked storage
solution based on EMC’s CLARiiON and Centera products for delivering complex
clinical information to pharmaceutical and biotech firms and to healthcare
professionals nationwide.
Along with the legal, financial, insurance, and
government sectors, the healthcare industry is notable for the sheer volume
of paperwork it generates. But medical applications also carry the burden of
collecting and storing masses of patient images that have a unique lifecycle.
While some must remain readily accessible, others disappear into archives
unless/until they are required for charting the genesis or progress of
maladies. The evolution of PACS benefits hospitals and other medical
facilities by offering a means for more easily updating, storing, and
retrieving comprehensive EPRs. At one level, the IBM/Siemens deal is an
example of how commercial IT solutions can evolve out of research work. IBM
has been involved in a number of large scale medical imaging projects
including the University of Pennsylvania Mammography Grid and the UK Breast
Cancer Grid, which depend on flexible, scalable storage technologies. But the
new deal also offers evidence of the key role storage plays in IBM’s On
Demand strategy. If creating and maintaining such image repositories is
beyond the means of medical facilities, they will have the option of turning
to vendors like IBM and Siemens who offer PACS storage as a service.
The EMC announcements offer different variations on
a similar theme. The EMC deal with Eastman Kodak will provide robust PACS
solutions similar those offered by IBM and Siemens, but are aimed more at
medical facilities and HMOs that can and will maintain their own image
archive systems. Of equal interest is the agreement between EMC and RMIS for
delivering EPR and clinical data for a range of clinical uses. While PACS
applications require the muscular handling of sheer volumes of data, the
opportunities in automated EPR are also huge for vendors and clients, but
demand far more nimble strategies. Given the capabilities of EMC’s content
addressed storage (CAS) Centera technology for securely managing and
delivering complex, comprehensive, and changeable information, it appears a
solid choice for this sort of application, and could also provide EMC a
springboard into other healthcare opportunities.
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