THE Network is the Computer. That is the message being promoted by Sun, a company which is most closely connected with the notion of client-server computing.
In fact, Sun is trying to make itself into the ultimate model of enterprise-wide client-server computing as witnessed by its efforts to become a company best described by the phrase 'Sun run on Sun'.
In order to pursue this goal, Sun has been eliminating its legacy systems, recently shutting down the last of its mini-computers and moving its Milpitas, California, data centre entirely over to Sun-based servers - more than 260 of them, in fact, with numbers growing by an average of two each week.
With an average of one gigabyte (GB) of mass storage on each machine, the Sun data centre has more than 250 GB of database and applications. These drive the entire worldwide operations of more than 13,000 employees and a network that supports communication levels that can reach two million electronic mail messages per day.
Actually, the only area of Sun's operations that remain to be moved to Sun-based client-server solutions are its manufacturing operations, and work is clearly underway to make that move. Across the street from the data centre is one of Sun's production facilities where teams are building the racks, right above the production floors, to hold the servers that should be fully operational in about 18 months.
But, even beyond this obvious internal focus on client-server computing, there is a whole philosophy of client-server computing that drives Sun.
