Yen Steps Down as Microelectronics Head, Exits Sun
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

David Yen, the two-decade veteran of Sun Microsystems who has in one way, shape, or form been involved in the company's microprocessor and system designs for nearly as long as the company has been in existence, announced this week that he is stepping down from running Sun's Microelectronics unit and is, in fact, leaving the company. The announcement follows in the wake of Sun's disclosure that it has picked a new foundry partner and that its 'Rock' UltraSparc RK multicore processors would be a year late to market. READ MORE >

Sun Bags $44.3 Million DARPA Contract for Funky Chip Interconnect
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

While the company is perhaps best known for its software innovations, such as Network File System and the Java language and related runtime environment, Sun Microsystems and the many companies it has acquired do a lot of research in hardware, particularly in chip architecture. The engineers have been working on a new chip interconnection technology called proximity communication for the past couple of years, and this week, Uncle Sam ponied up $44.3 million in cash to help Sun continue its research and perhaps, just perhaps, radically change the way computer systems are manufactured. READ MORE >

Disk Array Capacity and Sales Still Growing at Historical Rates
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There may be a lot of things that are slowing down in the information technology sector or among businesses in general, but enterprise-class data storage is not one of them. In fact, according to recent reports from IDC, sales of disk storage systems kept humming along at historical rates in the fourth quarter of 2007 despite some of the turbulence in certain sectors of the global economy in various geographical areas. READ MORE >

CMDB: A Journey, Not a Destination
by Richard Muirhead

Organizations are increasingly reliant on their IT infrastructure to deliver the solutions they need to drive the business forward. As a result, many organizations are turning to ITIL to help them to address IT support and delivery challenges and deal more effectively with operational processes. The configuration management database, or CMDB, is a fundamental component of the ITIL framework, yet despite increasing awareness and demand for CMDBs by ITIL adopters, many still struggle to understand exactly what a CMDB is and how it can be used and implemented to maximize the potential of their ITIL framework. READ MORE >