We'll have to talk some other time about ZFS, the new 128-bit file system announced at the end of 2004 (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/19/47storinside_1.html) that Sun is finally shipping this quarter. Also, we'll have to revisit the StorageTek 5320, a new NAS appliance based on AMD Opteron processors with performance levels that Sun claims will leave NetApp products in the dust.

The real scoop of Network Computing 2006 is something that you cannot buy just yet. Project Honeycomb is the code name for a new technology (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/23/HNhoneycombnas_1.html) that Sun promises "will blur the lines between application servers and storage." Think of a resilient storage system that -- instead of being a dumb data repository, as most are -- has a well-defined personality and actually "knows" the data it contains.

At the event, Sun presented a first prototype capable of independently conducting searches making the best use of its contained data and metadata. Future evolutions of this new species of storage could develop additional personalities; think of mail-aware or database-aware appliances.

Moreover, Honeycomb (I'll use this name for now) can push resilience to a new level. At the show Sun proved that such a system can survive the simultaneous failure of three disk drives, which will kill traditional, RAID-based systems.

I believe that Honeycomb will become yet another milestone in Sun's history, but technology is not the only front the company is engaged on -- they're also out chasing more revenue. Visit its site's store and you will see it populated with many bargain offers (http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?pm=7b56b1:10af4f8d04b:-6005&cmdStartPromo_CP), such as significant discounts when you bundle both servers and storage in your order.