Archive | August, 2003

Sun Launches Hardware Compatibly List (HCL) Program; Invites Vendors to Test Products on Solaris x86 Platform

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced significantly expanded hardware support for the Solaris Operating System (OS) x86 Platform Edition. Sun’s goal is to ensure that the Solaris OS x86 is available on the widest range of x86 systems by adding 100 new third-party systems and 100 new components to its Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) delivering more value, choice and flexibility to customers.

Sun also introduced a hardware certification test suite (HCTS) and promotion program. The HCTS is available immediately and enables integrators, system vendors and independent hardware vendors (IHVs) to self-certify their x86 platforms and extend their reach to customers. All Solaris 9 OS x86 users and vendors are invited to participate, test and list their products on the official Sun Solaris 9 OS x86 HCL site.

Today, IHVs wanting to leverage the growing market for Solaris x86 are delivering the device driver support needed for enterprise-class deployments. Customers can access a detailed Solaris x86 hardware compatibility list at www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl and take advantage of a full range of certified drivers and system configurations, and a growing catalog of third-party and open-source applications.

“As we continue to kick the Solaris x86 program into high gear, our partner response has been overwhelming,” said Ann Wettersten, vice president of marketing, software systems group at Sun. “We’ve seen more than 250,000 additional registered licenses of Solaris 9 x86 from industries such as finance, government, retail and telecom in the past four months alone. Customers are asking Sun and our partners for a proven, secure, enterprise-class operating system that leverages the x86 volume platform and is free and clear from any litigation concerns at a very aggressive price point.”

As mass viruses continue to pose a significant threat to any organization’s IT infrastructure, customers are looking to utilize the most reliable and secure system at a competitive price. With licensing starting at $99, the Solaris 9 OS x86 provides key integrated applications with built-in security features such as an integrated, enterprise-class firewall. For additional security, the Trusted Solaris OS for x86 delivers carrier-grade availability with military-grade security. Trusted Solaris is the only enterprise-class OS that provides the highest level of security assurance in the market.

“Sun is aggressively moving to ensure that Solaris x86 is available on the widest variety of x86 systems. Through our partnership agreement with Sun, Electronic Business Solutions (EBS) will fully integrate, service and support the Solaris x86 platform on a variety of high volume x86 systems to offer our customers the benefits of the leading UNIX(r) operating system,” said Fran Oh, President and CEO of Electronic Business Solutions. “EBS has been authorized by HPQ to support the Solaris OS x86 platform on their Proliant servers. EBS will be providing HPQ field sales team and customers with front line sales support as well as integration, service and support worldwide.”

“Sun selected Xoriant as its certification partner to help customers and OEMs certify their specific x86 systems with the Solaris OS x86,” said Girish Gaitonde, CEO of Xoriant. “Our partnership with Sun further accelerates the Solaris x86 adoption rate by providing a turnkey approach for Sun partners and customers who want to outsource compatibility testing for their x86 products.”

In addition to offering a highly secure operating system, Sun delivers a safe choice amid pending intellectual property disputes. Sun indemnifies its customers for all Solaris Operating Systems, including Sun’s SPARC, x86 and Trusted Solaris, making the Solaris OS a safe choice for customers moving forward.

About the Solaris x86 Platform Edition

The Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) is the premiere UNIX OS for the enterprise. Solaris 9 OS x86 offers customers increased service levels with decreased costs, while providing key integrated applications, superior Java performance, reliability, serviceability, scalability, hardware utilization, interoperability, and binary compatibility with Linux. For IT managers of small to medium sized businesses, who are dissatisfied with high infrastructure costs and expensive workgroup server environments, Solaris x86 brings its enterprise-class, robust Solaris Operating System to the low-cost computing environment. Currently, more than 1,000 applications from more than 600 ISVs are available on Sun’s Solaris x86 Platform Edition ranging from database, security and Web services applications to vertical solutions such as military-grade solutions for government and defense applications

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About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, Trusted Solaris and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.  

— Company Inks Mega Deals with General Dynamics, Southwest Airlines and Department of Veterans Affairs, Among Others

— Sun Assembles x86 Advisory Board to Improve Customer Value with Tighter Software and Hardware Integration

Demonstrating a commanding position in the low-cost computing market, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced it has forged major deals with industry-leading businesses since the launch of Network Computing 2003 on February 10. These low-cost product offerings have attracted customer wins from leading companies and organizations such as Best Buy Canada, Dartmouth College, General Dynamics, GetThere (a Sabre Holdings Company), Land Rover, Northeastern University, University of Notre Dame, Southwest Airlines, Telus, University of Southern California (USC), West McLaren Mercedes and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

This major surge in customer wins highlights the significant demand for Sun’s low-cost products in the marketplace. For example, customers are looking to Sun over the competition for low-cost storage solutions, such as the Sun StorEdge 3300 family, which complements Sun’s entry-level servers and supports everything from the Solaris Operating System to Linux. Along with cost savings, Sun is providing its customers with simplified, low-cost, comprehensive storage solutions that reduce IT complexity and enable businesses to better manage, control and access information assets.

Sun’s other low-cost product offerings include workstations, entry-level Sun Fire and Netra servers. In addition, the Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform allows customers to mix, match and manage the Solaris and Linux operating systems, SPARC and x86 architectures and special function blades in one chassis.

“These wins are a testament to the fact that none of our competitors can match the unparalleled choice, innovation and value that Sun brings to low-cost computing. Sun’s strategy of providing a choice of systems solutions is resonating with customers in a big way,” said Neil Knox, executive vice president, Volume Systems Products. “Our entry-level product line and integrated systems approach have garnered tremendous market momentum. Customers want open, integratable systems that offer enterprise-class features, service and support. Whether it’s Solaris on x86 or SPARC platform, or standard Linux on x86, Sun is delivering a broad range of powerful low-cost solutions that meet our customers immediate and long-range needs.”

“Sun is also meeting its customers’ demand for value and low cost. Sun has demonstrated it is committed to price points below Dell, IBM, and HP in the low-cost computing market. Sun’s best-in-class offerings are gaining speed throughout the industry,” Knox said.

Driving Low Cost Momentum with ISV and Channel Partners

The x86 ISV Advisory Board – an expansion of Sun’s Linux ISV Advisory Board created in January 2003 – is committed to continually improving total customer value with tighter software and hardware integration on Sun products built on the x86 architecture.

“The ISV Advisory Board is providing valuable customer and partner insight in an effort to help shape Sun’s low-cost computing strategy,” said Tim Bergloff, vice president, Global Sun Alliance, SourceFire. “Sun is a visionary company and the expansion of this board is a positive move to ensure it delivers products to the market that score with the ISV community. Sun has proven it highly values being responsive and flexible to the needs of its partners and customers.”

“From its inception twenty-one years ago, Sun recognized the needs and success of its partners were indivisible from its own,” said Stuart Wells, senior vice president, market development, Sun Microsystems. “By providing advanced insight into Sun’s x86-based product roadmap, the ISV Advisory Board provides an open forum for ISV partners to give direct and honest feedback.”

Sun Delivering Vertical Market Solutions

Sun is making significant inroads with its entry-level solutions, which combine systems and the Sun ONE software stack in several important vertical markets such as airlines, automotive, education, government, manufacturing, retail and telecommunications. General Dynamics, one of the world’s leading defense contractors, partnered with Sun to secure a multi-billion dollar contract with the U.S. Army in June.

“Sun provides our armed forces with secure and powerful systems required for combat ready applications,” said Chris Marzilli, vice president and general manager of commercial hardware systems, General Dynamics C4 Systems. “Sun’s entry-level workstations and servers possess the proven, military-grade, fault tolerant technology necessary to withstand very demanding battlefield conditions.”

Southwest Airlines also turned to Sun’s superior low-cost computing technology in building a shared infrastructure to handle database needs for several projects.

“As the nation’s largest low fare airline, Southwest Airlines demands technology solutions that not only emphasize value, but can handle the rigors of massive, high volume applications. Whether it’s processing critical operational data like flight schedules or tracking postal packages across the country, Sun’s open and integratable systems give Southwest Airlines the network computing power and flexibility to manage extremely heavy workloads while delivering the industry’s best price performance,” said Kerry Schwab, Director Midrange and Intel Computing, Technology Department, Southwest Airlines.

“Enterprises today are demanding cost-effective IT solutions that solve their most pressing business problems,” said Jean S. Bozman, vice president, Global Enterprise Server Solutions, IDC. “Since its launch in February, Sun’s low-cost computing initiative has helped many enterprises to meet those needs more effectively, to utilize resources more fully, and to quickly deploy total solutions including servers, storage, software and services that address both near-term and long-term business requirements. Sun remains a strong volume-server vendor (servers priced less than $25,000), and the leader in Unix volume server shipments and revenues, based on Q103 IDC worldwide data.”

Sun’s assault on the low-cost computing market has cemented a leadership position, providing customers with unprecedented value and price-performance. Please see the following releases: June 17, 2003, “Sun Microsystems Delivers Secure, Low-cost Computing in the Financial Services Market” and June 10, 2003,”Sun’s Low-cost Computing Model Hits Mark With Retail Leaders.” For more information on Sun’s low-cost computing initiative, please visit the World Wide Web at http://sun.com/lowcost/momentum/.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, Trusted Solaris and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.  

Sun Fire V480 Server is a Low-Cost, Better Price-Performance Alternative to HP and Dell Systems

Delivering on its commitment to offer low-cost computing products, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that its Sun Fire V480 server now features 1.05 GHz UltraSPARC® III Cu processors and provides greater processing power. This increase in processing power has proven a 22 percent boost in performance and a 26 percent increase in price-performance(1). With new, industry-standard benchmark results, powered by faster, UltraSPARC III 1.05 GHz processors, combined with Sybase IQ12.5 and running the Solaris[tm] 9 operating system, the Sun Fire V480 server outperformed HP by 33 percent, proving to offer the best price-performance four-way system on the market. On performance alone, the Sun Fire V480 server outperformed Dell by 8 percent.

“Our Sun Fire V480 server aims to deliver more than what Dell, HP or any of our competitors offer – integrated systems with more value,” said Souheil Saliba, vice president of marketing, volume systems products group at Sun. “Without compromising on performance, we are sweetening our offering for our customers, providing systems with a balanced architecture, proven, scalable Sun[tm] ONE software and binary-compatibility – all designed to reduce cost and complexity in the data center.”

In the four processor rack-optimized server market (all OS), Sun grew more market share in factory revenue in Q1 2003 than any other vendor year-over-year, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, June 2003(2). This phenomenal growth was propelled by the Sun Fire V480 server.

Sun Fire V480 Server Proves Best Price-Performance

Industry-standard TPC-H 100 GB benchmark submissions among four-way 100GB systems prove that the Sun Fire V480 server offers better price-performance than Dell’s PowerEdge 6650 and HP’s DL580 G2 servers. The Sun Fire V480 server achieved a QphH @ 100GB result of 2,140.6 with a price-performance of $44 per QphH @ 100GB, up to 8 percent better performance than Dell, which runs at nearly twice the GHz.

Competitive TPC-H @100GB Results:

Sybase IQ, a product designed specifically for data warehousing applications, was used as the database manager. The Sybase IQ RDBMS, combined with the Sun Fire V480 server, can provide dramatic reductions in the cost and amount of disk storage needed to support a data warehouse.

Pricing and Availability

The Sun Fire V480 system starts at $19,995 (USD) with two 1.05 GHz CPUs and 4GB of memory and is generally available now. The system is complementary to the Sun StorEdge[tm] 3510 Fibre Channel and 3310 SCSI arrays, and can be pre-configured and integrated onsite at Sun prior to shipping through the Sun Customer Ready Systems (CRS) program.

About TPC-H

Established by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), the TPC-H benchmark is an industry-standard Decision Support test designed to measure systems’ capability to examine large volumes of data, execute queries with a high degree of complexity, and give answers to critical business questions. The TPC-H benchmark evaluates a composite performance metric (QphH@size) and a price/performance metric $/QphH@size) that measure the performance of various decision support systems by the execution of sets of queries against a standard database under controlled conditions.

TPC-H, QphH and $/QphH are trademarks of the TPC. For additional information on the TPC-H benchmark, please visit the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Web site at http://www.tpc.org/.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

(1) Sun Fire V480 @ 900MHz results: 1760 QphH @ 100, $60 US per QphH @ 100: March, 2003 TPC-H benchmark @100GB

(2) Sun’s unit market share jumped three points from 18.4% in Q4CY02 to 21.4% in Q1CY03. Dell’s market share grew 2.1 points from 12.6% in Q4CY02 to 14.7% in Q1CY03. HP grew 0.2 points from 33.2% in Q4CY02 to 33.4% in Q1CY03. IBM declined 6.8 points from 24.8% in Q4CY02 to 18.0% in

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Fire, Sun StorEdge and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.