Sun is the first major systems vendor to publicly articulate its plans to use InfiniBand, but it's nevertheless still cagey about when it will introduce products based on the standard. "It'll be sometime in 2004," says John Davis, director of marketing and program management at Sun. [Ed. note: When the angle of the moon is 40 degrees above Mars and just before the ebb tide begins to turn...]
For Topspin's part, the startup has overcome the difficult hurdle of getting the first endorsement of its technology by a major supplier. "It shows we are battle-tested," says Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO of Topspin.
The startup broke cover last July, with $30 million in funding from Advent International, Accel Partners, and Redpoint Ventures, along with two new investors, Duff Ackerman & Goodrich and Presidio Venture Partners (see Topspin Takes Off).
How much further Topspin can take the relationship with Sun isn't clear at this point. The server giant has already acquired two technology companies in the past year, Pirus Networks and Terraspring, which puts Sun in a more acquisitive position than its competitors. But it appears to be in no rush to scoop up startups in the InfiniBand sector just yet (see Sun Bounces on Terraspring, Sun to Pilot N1 in Q1, and Sun Beams on Pirus).
"InfiniBand is an industry standard, and there are all kinds of developments happening out there," says Sun's Davis. "We are interested in working with many third parties."
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
