Archive | December, 2003

System Integrators and Resellers Gain Access to SAS Server Product Ahead of OEM Platforms

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., one of the world’s leading suppliers of hard disk drives and computer peripherals, today announced that Alienware, a leading manufacturer of high-performance desktop, notebook, media center, and professional systems, will utilize the Fujitsu MHT-BH 2.5″ 9.5mm mobile hard disk drive (HDD) with Serial-ATA (SATA) interface in its new Area-51m 7700 mobile PC, an ideal solution for the high-end gaming market. This system marks the first implementation of 2.5″ SATA hard disk drive technology in notebook computers.

With the Area-51m 7700, Alienware utilized the latest technology and hardware available, successfully harnessing the power of a desktop computer in a 17″ notebook. The Area-51m 7700 features up to two optical drives and two hard disk drives to give users an unbelievable amount of flexibility and performance to tackle any workload. Fujitsu hard disk drives can be used to create a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array to maximize performance.

“Alienware has become a technology leader based on our ability to recognize the possibilities presented by emerging technologies and implement them in ways that serve the needs of our customers,” said Patrick Cooper, director of product management for Alienware. “With the new Area-51m 7700 we utilized physically small but powerful technologies, such as the Fujitsu MHT-BH hard disk drive, to create a solution that gives users both worlds, the flexibility of a notebook seamlessly blended with the potent performance of a high performance desktop system.”

The Fujitsu MHT-BH hard disk drive, announced in early 2004 as the industry’s first and only 2.5″ SATA hard disk drive, redefined the possibilities for manufacturers in emerging notebook and enterprise storage markets. The MHT-BH hard disk drive is among the smallest, fastest and most efficient hard disk drives enabling innovation and improvements in everything from laptop and notebook computers, to other platforms and applications. The Fujitsu MHT-BH hard disk drive features Native Command Queuing (NCQ), an important feature that intelligently and simultaneously coordinates up to 32 instructions to be queued and reordered by the hard disk controller, contributing to a significant improvement in overall hard disk drive performance.

“Fujitsu’s SATA technology leadership positioned us as the only viable option to provide native Serial ATA II interface hard disk drive technology for notebook systems,” said Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing and business development, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. “We are excited to partner with Alienware and be a part of this next-generation laptop that will pave the way for mobile SATA notebook applications in the future.”

Hard Disk Drive Specifications:

Leveraging its technology leadership and innovation, Fujitsu designed the MHT-BH 2.5″ Serial ATA mobile hard disk drive to provide market-leading specifications that are critical for today’s mobile computing applications:

• Capacity: 40GB, 60GB, 80GB
• Rotational Speed: 5400 RPM
• Areal Density: 69Gb/sq.inch
• SATA Interface

• Native Command Queuing
• Staggered Spin Up
• Hot Plug

• Track to Track Seek Time: 1.5ms
• Host Transfer rate: 150 MB/s
• Operating Shock: 225G (2ms)

About Alienware

Alienware manufactures high-performance desktop, notebook, and media center systems and leading-edge professional systems. Alienware offers unique and award-winning products that incorporate state-of-the-art components, innovative engineering and design, and unprecedented customer service. Alienware systems are available direct within the United States and Europe. For more information, please visit the Alienware site or call 1-800-ALIENWARE (254-3692).
For more information, please see: http://www.alienware.com

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is a leading provider of customer-focused IT and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Pace-setting device technologies, highly reliable computing and communications platforms, and a worldwide corps of systems and services experts uniquely position Fujitsu to deliver comprehensive solutions that open up infinite possibilities for its customers’ success. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.7 trillion yen (US$44.5 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2005.
For more information, please see: http://www.fujitsu.com

About Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc.

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. conducts engineering and marketing activities in San Jose, CA and sales operations throughout the United States. Fujitsu Computer Products of America currently offers products and services including scanners and scanner maintenance, hard disk drives, and Magneto-Optical drives. Fujitsu Computer Products of America is located at 2904 Orchard Parkway, San Jose, CA, 95134. For more information about Fujitsu products and services, call us at 800-626-4686 or 408-432-6333.
For more information, please see: http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com

Press Contacts

Copyright 2005 Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. All rights reserved. Fujitsu and the Fujitsu logo are registered trademarks and The Possibilities are Infinite is a trademark of Fujitsu Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owner. Statements herein are based on normal operating conditions and are not intended to create any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. reserves the right to modify at any time without notice these statements, our services, products, and their warranty and performance specifications.

New x86 and UltraSPARC Systems Provide Customers Greater Flexibility and Choice for Scaling Out Enterprise and Telecom Computing

SunNetwork 2003 Conference and Pavilion – December 3, 2003 – Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced it has expanded its x86 Blade and Netra system portfolio. Sun’s new x86 systems with Solaris or Linux offer customers a lower cost “out-of-the-box” alternative, delivering up to 13 times lower acquisition costs over Microsoft Windows 2003 while leveraging the uncompromising security and reliability of the worldwide market-leading UNIX operating system.[1] .

“The clear message from customers today is that they want reliable, low-cost solutions that are easy to implement,” said Neil Knox, executive vice president, Volume Systems Products at Sun. “Sun is once again breaking new ground in providing scalable end-to-end solutions at lower price points than our competitors and simultaneously improving system reliability.”

At today’s Network Computing quarterly launch at SunNetwork Berlin, Sun unveiled the first multi-architecture blade computing platform, available with UltraSPARC, x86, SSL Proxy and content load balancing blades. Sun also announced its first Netra rack system utilizing the UltraSPARC IIIi processor and the first Netra blade server supporting PICMG 2.16 standards. The new systems allow customers to choose between the following platforms for running their business-critical applications:

Sun today announced the following new features for the Network Computer:

• Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition): By providing the No. 1 UNIX, Solaris OS, on the x86 platform, Sun continues to provide customers with choice and flexibility.[2] With increased partner support and continuous OS innovation, the Solaris 9 OS (x86 Platform Edition) is experiencing rapid adoption with more than 375,000 registered licenses since January 2003. BEA, Sybase and other partners have recently announced that they are porting their applications to Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition). In addition, Sun’s Java Enterprise System available on the Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition) helps to provide customers with rock solid, high performance web service applications, such as the Secure Web Infrastructure Server.
• Linux OS: Support for Red Hat’s RHEL 3.0 and SuSE’s SLES 8.0 enables enterprise computing on open source technology. Typical horizontal applications supported by Red Hat and SuSE include core infrastructure solutions such as web, application and e-mail servers, or compute farms, grid computing and others.

New Blade Servers Lower Operational Costs and Increase Serviceability

Customers can now build flexible and horizontally scalable IT infrastructures that utilize compute resources efficiently, with the availability of a new x86-based blade, which can be deployed as part of the industry’s first multi-architecture blade platform. With this new addition, the Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform enables maximum flexibility to customers by mixing, matching and managing Solaris and Linux operating systems, SPARC and x86 architectures, and special function blades all in the same chassis.

The Sun Fire B100x is a single processor x86 blade server that utilizes AMD’s Mobile Athlon XP 1800+ processor at 1.53 GHz and one or two gigabytes of DDR memory options — double the memory available in some competitors’ systems. The x86 blade server supports the Solaris 9 Operating System (x86 Platform Edition) and standard Linux distributions from Sun. The entry price point for the B100x is $1795 U.S. List and is available today.

The Sun Fire B10p SSL Proxy blade server, when combined with the Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing blade server, can enable better utilization from server resources, as well as deliver fast, reliable responses to Web requests at low costs. The Sun Fire B10p blade server also provides SSL encryption and decryption services when combined with the Sun Fire B10n blade server. The B10p SSL Proxy blade server lists at $13,800 U.S. and is available today.

Sun iForce Partners Welcome Price, Performance Benefits

With the expansion of Sun’s low cost, out-of-the box solutions, Sun iForce partners are discovering the performance and price point benefits. These partners include PolyServe, Inc., Sourcefire, Inc., and Financial Services Market Connectivity partners B2BITS, British Telecom, Century 24 Solutions, COR Financial Solutions, Concise Group Limited, Integra SP, Random Walk Computing, Trace Financial, Trend Micro Inc., and Volante.

New Innovative Netra Servers Reestablish Sun’s Leadership in the NEBS Rack Server Market and Help Customers Reduce Administration and Software Development Costs

Reestablishing Sun’s leadership in the 2-way NEBS server market, the new Netra 240 server, the industry’s first and only 64-bit, NEBS Level 3 certified server that runs on the UltraSPARC IIIi processor, is a low cost, rugged, rack-optimized 2U server starting at $6,995 U.S. List price – which up to 15 percent below comparable Intel-based NEBS Level 3 certified systems from HP and IBM. Designed to withstand the extreme environmental conditions often experienced in telecom central offices, the Netra 240 server offers excellent price/performance, advanced lights out system management (ALOM) and industry leading features like built-in quad Gigabit Ethernet ports (twice what the competition offers), internal 5GB DVD-RW for backup and archival as well as the System Configuration Card (SCC) for faster system recovery. The Netra 240 also offers long term investment protection through our guaranteed application compatibility with current and future servers and operating environments.

Answering customers’ demands for manageable, horizontally scalable, standards-based, NEBS Level 3 certified blade systems, Sun today unveiled the Netra CT820 server, a PICMG 2.16 standard CPSB (CompactPCI Packet Switched Backplane) system running on the proven carrier grade Solaris (SPARC platform). With Sun’s superior manageability technology and systems that deliver the 99.999+ percent system availability required for telecom infrastructure applications, customers can save up to 40 percent on their software development costs for operations, administration and maintenance. The Netra CT820 systems start at $32,995 U.S. List Price including a 21 slot CPSB chassis, one CP2300 UltraSPARC IIi blade, dual redundant DMC alarm cards and 100Base T Ethernet switches with dual Gigabit ethernet uplinks. The Netra CT820 will be generally available in January 2004.

Sun Fire V65x and V60x Systems Get Upgrade

Running the SPEC jAppServer2002 benchmark, the Sun Fire V65x system provides the highest performance results of comparably configured 2-way x86 servers. (Source: http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2002/results/jAppServer2002.html). The new Sun Fire V65x and V60x standard configurations include new 3.2 GHz Xeon processors with an enlarged 1MB L3 cache and will run either Solaris OS or standard Linux distributions from Sun’s partners. The systems are expected to be available next month both from Sun and Sun channel partners.

More information about these products can be found online at http://sun.com/products.

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, iForce, Solaris, Netra, Sun Fire, Java 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 an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Unix is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company Ltd.

[1] When comaring Solaris OS x86 to MS Windows in a typical scenarios on two processor sytems, the total cost of acquisition of the Solaris OS is 13 times less than the cost of a comparable Windows offering – In a Web server configuration, the TCA of Windows is 2X-13X more; Solaris 9 x86 = $250 (unlimited users); MS Windows 2003 = $397 (Web Edition [WE]) or $3,395 (WE and Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration Server). Source= http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/default.asp

[2] Sun grew its position in the worldwide server market as the undisputed UNIX server leader in Q2CY03. Source – IDC Q2CY03 Worldwide Server Tracker Report (August 28, 2003)

More Than 3,000 Customers, Including Xerox, Enjoy Access To Innovative New Features Through Solaris OS Distributions

SunNetwork 2003 Conference and Pavilion – December 3, 2003 – Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced significant updates to its Solaris Operating System (OS) and additional support for its “military-grade” Trusted Solaris Operating System. In addition, unlike competitors such as HP, which has end-of-lifed certain UNIX offerings such as its Alpha Tru-64 and delayed shipment of HP-UX11i v.3 by 18 months, Sun announced the latest results of investments in the Solaris OS with vast performance improvements, increased security, and breakthrough diagnostic capabilities in the latest Solaris OS distributions. With Sun’s new commitment to provide the Solaris OS on the 32- and 64-bit AMD Opteron processor-based platform — jointly announced with AMD on November 17, 2003 — customers will have a robust, globally supported, high performance and broadly adopted platform, running on SPARC, Intel and AMD Opteron processor-based systems, to turn to as a compelling alternative.

“Customers tell me they are reassured that we have redoubled our efforts with continued investment in the Solaris OS,” said John Loiacono, vice president, operating platforms group for Sun. “With our focus on delivering dramatic performance increases for low-end systems and TCP/IP networking, industry leading security levels, and simple effective virtualization technologies, we are bolstering the Solaris OS as the foundation for the Sun Java Enterprise System for SPARC and AMD Opteron processor-based systems. Sun remains committed to delivering the very same functionality of the Solaris OS on its volume platforms SPARC and x86, which include the AMD Opteron processor, all at aggressive price points.”

Features included in the December Solaris OS distributions include:

• x86 Performance Optimization: Improvements to Solaris x86 OS deliver higher throughput by taking advantage of the full capabilities of today’s x86 platforms with extended instruction sets and higher bandwidth interconnects. Support has been added for the Streaming Instruction set (SSE2 and hyperthreading), which is expected to deliver greatly improved video and audio streaming performance over previously available releases. Sun’s internal tests show industry leading Java technology and application server performance on one to two CPU systems delivering performance increases over earlier versions of the Solaris OS.
• Advancements in Network Performance: Today’s high bandwidth networks place heavy demands on the operating system and on the processor. Sun has redesigned the networking code within the Solaris OS, to deliver dramatically higher network throughput with less processor load. The new version of the Solaris OS delivers from 20 to 47 percent better networking performance than previous versions. Customers can benefit by getting improvements in networking infrastructure without purchasing additional hardware.
• Enhanced Security: Microsoft recently announced that its “Longhorn” Windows Operating System would not be available until mid-2005, leaving its customers waiting for much-needed OS security enhancements. By applying the higher security protection of role based access controls and fine grained privileges within the Solaris OS, systems administrators greatly diminish their risk of viruses, worms, trojan horses, and other malicious code that may find its way into the system. Solaris, already recognized as one of the industry’s most secure operating systems, now gets bolstered with these new features that enable systems administrators to have even more fine-grained control of system security, for example, user and system processes are granted only the necessary access to operating system services and data that they need to perform their tasks and no more.
• DTrace Advanced Tracing: The Solaris OS delivers a new tool that pervasively tracks and logs critical system and software activity on demand – which increases a system administrator’s productivity and helps reduce downtime. The ability to dynamically “trace” every system process allows system administrators and developers to identify the bottlenecks in production systems and/or software applications, thereby dramatically speeding the time to resolution or optimization, saving costs and improving service. Early use of DTrace has shown reductions in resolution time from several days to hours, or even minutes.
• Network File System version 4 (NFS v.4): To save networking infrastructure costs, many IT groups wish to exploit the internet for linking distant data centers. NFS v.4 extends the benefits of file sharing by enabling secure access to files across the internet. The Solaris OS implementation has a stronger security negotiation mechanism, enhanced extensibility capabilities and cross platform interoperability over previous versions of Solaris.

These next generation features are delivered through Sun Software Express, Sun’s innovative early access program that provides subscribers with predictable monthly installments of software code in advance of release and allows them to develop, test and optimize applications to allow for faster time-to-market. Sun Software Express for Solaris, which is the first Sun software product available through this new distribution mechanism, is gaining continued success with more than 3,000 downloads in three months.

“With the Software Express for Solaris program we can take advantage of the latest Solaris technologies on an accelerated schedule, allowing faster time-to-market for our own products,” said Rich Lauria, manager of production controller development at Xerox Corporation. “We immediately embraced the program and are seeing good results.”

In addition, Sun today announced the fifth update to the Solaris 9 OS for SPARC and x86 platforms. New features in the update release include secure provisioning and booting, and change management via the Internet. These features, paired with current capabilities such as Solaris Containers, make the Solaris 9 OS the first commercial UNIX OS that can be booted remotely over the Internet without local network support. The Solaris 9 OS includes resource management capabilities built-in at no additional charge. The latest release also fully integrates the Sun Java Application Server 7 with the Solaris OS x86 and SPARC and includes the lastest Java Virtual Machine, J2SE 1.4.2.

Sun also announced Trusted Solaris for the SPARC and x86 platform, which includes support for additional Sun hardware such as the low-cost Sun Fire V60x and V65x systems, and the Sun Fire V250 and V440 SPARC systems. The latest version of Sun’s military-grade Trusted Solaris OS allows customers to take advantage of unique multi-level security features. Trusted Solaris is now being implemented in commercial application environments, such as banking and healthcare, for the same reasons governments and the armed forces find it useful — military-grade security – which provides mandatory access controls, data separation, and security labels that help prevent unauthorized access and alteration of data.

Increased Momentum for Solaris OS x86

With more than 375,000 registered licenses since January 2003, the Solaris OS x86 is rapidly gaining partner and customer momentum. Sun recently partnered with AMD to deliver Solaris OS support and optimization for AMD’s 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. With support from ISV partners such as BEA, Sybase and others, the Solaris x86 application portfolio is expanding quickly. Customers such as Maya Online, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research and GetMore Securities have chosen Solaris x86 over competing operating systems. Additionally, more than 175 systems are now listed on the Solaris x86 hardware compatibility list (HCL), enabling customers to take advantage of the enterprise-class Solaris OS on third-party x86 systems. For more information on the Solaris OS, please visit: http://www.sun.com/solaris

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, Java, Solaris, Trusted Solaris, Sun Fire, SunNetwork, J2ME 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. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. AMD and AMD Opteron are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.