Convergence is sought Sun Microsystems in 2004 plans to boost its enterprise clustering product by fitting it with high-availability capabilities now used in telecommunications applications, a Sun official said this week.Capabilities from the Sun Netra HA (High Availability) Suite, including checkpointing for fast recovery and the cluster membership API for understanding what nodes are part of a cluster, are to be moved over to the Sun Cluster package, said David Nelson-Gal, vice president of Sun’s availability products group, based in Menlo Park, Calif. Nelson spoke during a Sun event in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday evening held in connection with the ClusterWorld conference.Netra HA Suite has been deployed in telecommunications applications while Sun Cluster provides for general-purpose clustering in enterprise environments, according to Sun. “We’re converging the technology base,” Nelson-Gal said.Also to be moved to Sun Cluster is event mechanisms. “If you have an application on multiple nodes, this is a way of establishing communications between nodes in a cluster,” said Nelson-Gal. Sun, with its clustering plan, is looking to boost levels of availability for applications such as application servers, Nelson-Gal said. Jean Bozman, research vice president for global enterprise server solutions at IDC, in Mountain View, Calif., said high availability is becoming more of a requirement in applications such as Web environments and e-business.“In a lot of these businesses, those levels of high availability were not necessary even five years ago,” Bozman said. Software DevelopmentTechnology IndustrySmall and Medium Business