NAP (Network Attached Processing)

Azul Systems Inc. is taking network attached devices to a new level. Instead of NAS (Network Attached Storage), they are selling devices that can be easily installed on a network to act as a processing farm.

“We believe that compute power is going to follow the same path as networked storage, and that is enterprises are going to buy big buckets [of processing capabilities],” said Stephen DeWitt, president and CEO of Azul Systems. “What Azul wants to do [with compute power] is what EMC [Corp.] and [Network Appliance Inc.] did for storage, and what Cisco [Systems Inc.] did for networking.”

The devices fit inside a standard 19-inch rack and offer between 1 and 4 Gigabit Ethernet connections. These small devices could give a company more computing power inside a smaller space than conventional rack mount servers.

The first round of devices are designed for Java and J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) processing. No word on if they will move into other processing capabilities. Other companies could move into this field that would offer more processing choices but Azul will have the advantage of being in first.

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Azul Network Attached Processing site

18.Apr.05 Hardware, Technology