Major Vendor Plans to Replace Data Centers with SaaS: Can They Do It?

Brian Cinque, data center architect for Sun Microsystems, intends to put himself out of a job. By 2013, he said in a recent blog post, Sun intends to consolidate 50 percent of its data center footprint, and end up with no data centers within the two years that follow.

Along with SaaS, Sun will employ server virtualization, storage consolidation, and application consolidation strategies. Here’s how Cinque says they will accomplish this:

• Server Virtualization – “Xen/xVM, Solaris Zones/LDOMS”
• Storage Consolidation – “Tiered storage, NAS, etc.”
• Application Consolidation – “For SunIT its called IBIS”
• WAN acceleration – “Another interesting technology in which its roots have been around for a while.:
• SaaS – “SaaS plays a huge role. SaaS and mashups are an interesting discussion.”

Sun always has had a flair for the dramatic in its pronouncements, but it will be interesting to see how close it gets to this goal, and what kind of “gotchas” it hits along the way.