CHICAGO – Supercomm 2005 – Major blade server vendors gave a peek into their future roadmaps for telecom this week -- and not everyone's on the same page.

Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) offered a demo of its Netra ATCA Blade Platform, the first product from Sun to use the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA), an emerging industry standard.

Although still in its infancy, ATCA is expected to provide a standard platform for carrier-grade applications, with support for related standards, such as those from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

Up to now, Sun has revealed little about its ATCA blade plans, though Kirk Mosher, manager for Sun’s network systems group, says the server eventually will support both the Solaris and Linux operating systems, as well as Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) Opteron processors.

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— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum