TRAIN_00241.eml

NoneNoneSunWell, 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.