There is a white paper available on the Sun Web page that discusses the benefits of consolidating servers, planning a strategy of consolidation and choosing a platform.

Server consolidation (bringing together applications, databases and services onto fewer, more highly reliable servers) is one of today's hottest IT trends. Through consolidation, IT managers can cut high management costs associated with the runaway proliferation of small to mid-size distributed servers in their organizations. Multi-tiered client-server computing remains highly viable. In fact, today's environment is more distributed than ever.

But while IT leaders continue to embrace distributed computing, they're also returning to the notion of centralized design and management. As an integral step in this direction, server consolidation offers the opportunity to lower total cost of ownership (TCO), utilize computing resources more efficiently, increase control, raise service levels, improve availability, utilize skills more effectively and reduce the need for floor space.

There are several different ways to consolidate, from simply bringing existing systems under common management practice to consolidating many heterogeneous applications and services on one or a few systems. The more aggressive the consolidation effort, the more risk associated with the project and the more benefit to be gained.

Server consolidation initiatives involve several steps, from high-level consideration of business goals to tactical planning and timelines. Since consolidation can be quite complex, many seasoned professionals recommend starting small with a pilot project, making the most of the learning process, then leveraging the experience into larger projects. Some IT organizations have the resources to perform consolidations in-house, but most depend on outside services firms for portions of the project at least.

As a business partner for server consolidation, Sun provides unique server technologies, such as dynamic system domains (mainframe-like partitions), enabling the company to deliver the scalability, availability and resource management facilities required for successful consolidation initiatives. Sun offers the broadest binary compatible product line in the industry, allowing the company to support customer projects from the workgroup to the enterprise level.

Sun is dedicated to open systems, industry standards and a hardware and software product line that's completely compatible. This gives customers the flexibility to choose a solution knowing they can upgrade, grow or redeploy it in the future. With Sun as a business partner, organizations can plan and implement change to meet their own requirements in their own timeframes.

Other sections covered in the white paper:

• The Road to Server Consolidation
• The Benefits of Server Consolidation
• What Kind of Consolidation?
• Planning Your Strategy
• Choosing a Platform
• The Politics of Server Consolidation
• The Sun Difference: Technologies
• The Sun Difference: Products
• The Sun Difference: Customer Commitment

http://www.sun.com/datacenter/docs/consolidationoverview.html

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