Sun Open Storage Appliances Meet the Open Source Channel

When Sun Microsystems announced its so-called Open Storage Appliances (code-named Amber Road) today, The VAR Guy noticed an interesting trend: Open source companies from A to Z (Alfresco to Zmanda) lined up to endorse the product family. Hmmm. Sun hasn’t exactly set the world on fire lately. But Amber Road shows partner promise. Here’s why.

First, let’s tackle the product hype. According to Sun, the Amber Road product family (officially called the Sun Storage 7000 family) offers:

“one-fourth the energy consumption, installation and configuration in under five minutes and up to 75% cost savings – all compared to competing storage systems.”

Frankly, The VAR Guy can neither confirm nor deny those claims. He’s happy to have a few terabytes of storage in his personal office. Amber Road is in a completely different universe.

Engaging Tomorrow’s Channel — Today

Now, for the more interesting angle: The VAR Guy is closely watching Alfresco (content management), Zmanda (backup and recovery) and other open source companies as they develop their channel programs. (See The Open 50 for details.)

By endorsing Sun’s Amber Road strategy, both Alfresco and Zmanda could create “pull” in the channel for Sun’s open storage strategy.

Of course that could be a bit of a stretch. As one of MySQL’s closest partners, Zmanda has little choice but to sing Sun’s praises whenever possible. Still, Zmanda could have remained mum if the company didn’t believe in Amber Road.

Closing thoughts: The Amber Road products surface only one week after Sun announced a more aggressive channel strategy for the company’s open source solutions. Also, Avnet Technology Solutions — a major Sun partner and global distributor — is taking a close look at open source opportunities for solutions providers. And Forbes today has story about Sun potentially getting its act together.

The VAR Guy isn’t about to say that Sun is on the road to recovery. But Amber Road, coupled with more open source partnerships, could have Sun heading in the right direction…

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