Archive | February, 2004

Sun Solidifies Market Leadership Position in Total Worldwide Units Shipped in HPTC Servers; Shows Resurgence in UltraSPARC®- and Solaris(tm)-based Enterprise Class Server Systems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced it maintained the number one position in total server units shipped in the high performance and technical computing market (HPTC), according to IDC’s Technical Qview, Q4 2003. By earning the top spot in the fourth quarter, Sun also claims the crown for most server units shipped during the 2003 calendar year. The report also shows year-over-year revenue growth for the fourth quarter of 42.4 percent for Sun in the HPTC server market.

“Sun’s HPTC strategy is taking off with the right partnerships and the right technology to lower cost and complexity for our customers,” said Shahin Khan, vice president of the High Performance and Technical Computing business unit at Sun. “Recent product introductions including the first AMD Opteron-based server, a new family of throughput computing enterprise server systems featuring the multi-threaded UltraSPARC IV processor that will double customer productivity, and N1 Grid virtualization technologies will help Sun continue to advance its leadership position in HPTC. This new firepower also bolsters Sun’s already impressive lineup of Java-enabled, UltraSPARC- and x86-based servers, which are the ideal building blocks for deploying grid computing solutions.”

Sun’s HPTC group has made deep inroads in attracting significant customers and growing extensive business partnerships and alliances as part of its grid computing initiative. An array of interconnect technology companies recently joined the newly established Sun HPTC Alliance Partner Program geared to advance grid performance for Sun customers. This alliance program aims to provide customers with a wide range of technologies covering data, compute, visualization and access to grid computing solutions. The first HPTC Alliance partners to join include Infinicon, Force10 Networks, Mellanox, Myrinet, Quadrics, Topspin Communications and Voltaire.

Sun also scored an impressive win during the quarter with Pennsylvania State University. Sun systems are being used as part of the Pleiades Cluster, housed in Penn State’s Data Processing Center, which analyzes data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). The cluster plays an important role for the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory, a global computational laboratory that supports experimentation in grid-enabled, data-intensive scientific computing. Additional highlights from the IDC Technical Server report include:

• Strong results in the departmental computing segment demonstrating continued traction for sales of small and medium nodes into grid clusters, primarily the x86 Xeon-based Sun Fire V60x / V65x servers and the Solaris– and UltraSPARC IIIi-based Sun Fire V210 and V240 servers, and the newly introduced Sun Fire V440 server. The eight-way and 12-way Sun Fire V880 and Sun Fire 1280 also saw strong sales growth of 31.3 percent and 76.5 percent respectively quarter over quarter.
• The resurgence in UltraSPARC- and Solaris-based Enterprise class servers over the previous quarter with solid sales of the Sun Fire 15K server, proving the customer need for large memory SMP systems along with successful cluster grids based on smaller footprint systems.
• Revenue growth in departmental servers of 30 percent quarter over quarter and 100 percent in the fourth quarter year over year.

For a more detailed report see the IDC High Performance Technical Computer Qview Report, 2/23/04

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

Program Continues Momentum with Over 80 Tru64 Customer Migrations

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced it is expanding its successful HP Away program to include a no risk path to Sun systems for HP-UX customers-a group faced with product delays and inconsistent availability across HP’s product line. Sun is offering these customers a UNIX(R) operating system (OS) alternative with its leading Solaris OS that scales from low cost x86 systems to Sun systems with over 100 processors. Through the HP Away program, Sun will help these customers protect long-term IT investments as they look to consolidate and expand their data centers.

Also today, Sun announced that over 80 customers have taken advantage of Sun’s HP Away program and migrated to Sun systems. The HP Away program was initially launched last year to address customers facing HP’s end-of-development for the Alpha/Tru64 platform and forced migration to Itanium.

“We’re expanding the HP Away program to take advantage of an inflection point in the industry,” said Larry Singer, Sun’s senior vice president, global market strategies. “Specifically, we’re addressing the disruption around HP’s architectural roadmap and its neglect of a key customer base, this time HP-UX users. Even as the technology market is picking up, HP-UX customers are hesitant to expand with an operating system that doesn’t have a clear future. We’re alleviating that problem by providing an easy path to Sun, while using the expanded HP Away program as a tool to help drive our own revenue growth.”

Industry analyst Michael Dortch of the Robert Francis Group also sees the opportunity: “IT executives and enterprises reliant upon HP and its technologies face significant change and uncertainty, precisely when many are challenged to deliver and demonstrate clear, sustainable business value from their IT initiatives. Sun’s HP-UX program (HP Away) combines proven technologies such as SPARC and Solaris with business-centric support and guidance, to offer these enterprises and IT executives a viable migration program and opportunities for significant business value, elasticity, and stability.”

HP-UX Opportunity

Today, there are roughly 270,000-plus PA-RISC/HP-UX customers worldwide. Last year HP announced a delay of its UNIX OS (HP-UX 11i v3) until at least 2005. In addition to this delay, HP-UX is currently not available across all of HP’s product line, unlike the Solaris OS which is available on every system Sun ships, and on key third party platforms. With the expanded HP Away program, Sun is targeting customers considering data center consolidation, as well as customers who are planning to deploy new systems in the next 12-18 months and want to help protect their current IT investments-particularly in the face of increasing uncertainty about the HP enterprise roadmap.

Sun’s program offers enterprise customers a risk-free path to growth on the Solaris OS and provides numerous advantages over HP-UX-beyond its long-term roadmap stability and high-level corporate commitment/investment. The Solaris OS boasts the largest base of ISV support for a UNIX operating system in the industry. Moreover, Sun has overseen 10 years of successful migrations to Solaris OS based on a proven methodology, resulting in reduced costs, increased quality of business services and accelerated development of new applications to meet evolving business needs.

Additionally, the Solaris OS already provides the critical clustering, dynamic partitioning and advanced file system features that HP-UX customers are awaiting sometime next year from HP-UX 11i v3. Solaris also helps ensure a predictable release cycle via its innovative Software Express for Solaris OS program and helps assure compatibility between generations. In addition, Sun provides a clear roadmap for future releases of the leading UNIX OS.

Customer Momentum

TrekLogic, a systems integrator and Sun partner, has worked closely with Sun to migrate over 20 HP-UX customers to Sun’s Solaris OS. “TrekLogic has helped customers ranging from large- to mid-sized installations, and has ensured that each migration was successfully completed within a minimum time period and with negligible business impact.,” said David Custard, director, business development, TrekLogic. “Working with Sun, TrekLogic’s full migration life cycle, from initial assessment, through implementation, post-migration quality assurance, technical transfer and ongoing support provides an end-to-end proven solution which allows customers to begin realizing the benefits of the Solaris platform at the earliest possible time.”

The Canadian province of Nova Scotia is another compelling example. Its numerous public entities manage their finances using SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning applications, which, until recently, resided on legacy Hewlett-Packard servers. Burgeoning usage led the province to seek a new hardware vendor-one committed to investing resources to support this growth. Its search ended with Sun, which worked with the province to migrate the SAP modules to a Sun systems and connected to a storage area network based on Sun StorEdge technologies.

“Sun best met our criteria regarding price-performance, technological robustness and ability to provide a complete solution. By selecting a long-term vendor, we’re saving the province at least 25 percent on hardware costs alone on an ongoing basis,” said Susan Sparks, Director of Corporate Information Systems, Department of Finance, Province of Nova Scotia.

HP Away-Program Overview

As part of the expanded HP Away program, Sun is extending both the easy migration path and attractive lease terms initially offered to Tru64 customers to HP-UX customers as well.

The HP Away program was launched in July of 2003. With it, Sun offers a shared model in which Sun works with customers to deploy an effective migration solution. Included in the program is a two-day migration consultation workshop at no charge, designed to determine the cost and technical requirements involved in a migration.

Customers that meet the determined requirements will also receive the following:

A two-week Tru64 or HP-UX to Solaris OS migration assessment service. If the customer decides not to proceed with the Tru64 or HP-UX to Solaris OS migration, Sun absorbs the cost of the two-week migration assessment service. If the customer decides to proceed, application porting is offered through Sun’s professional services group, teamed with ISVs, and Sun’s iForce centers.

Sun offers planning for IT Organization and Skills Migration that will help improve productivity, decrease time to implement and reduce TCO.

Sun also offers a storage TCO review to justify storage infrastructure migration from HP to Sun storage solutions.

Financing and trade-in offers are available to simplify the financial transition to Sun including a lease structure with deferred payment during the engagement (not to exceed 90 days) for the entire migration-Sun services, servers, storage and software.

Migration to Sun platforms program is a set of complimentary resources to accelerate assessment, execution and optimization of application ports from HP-UX and HP Tru64 to Sun Solaris SPARC/x86. Step-by-step technical guides, tools, service providers and more can be found at: http://www.sun.com/partners/migration. For more information on the HP Away migration program go to www.sun.com/hpuxmigration.

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, The Network is the Computer, iForce, and Solaris 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. Specifications are subject to change without notice.

New Sun Fire(tm) V20z Server Featuring AMD Opteron Processors Power Solaris(tm) and Linux up to 45 Percent Faster than Competition
Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform Featuring new Sun Fire B200x and N1(tm) Grid Provisioning Server up to 34 Percent Less Expensive than HP

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today delivered on its promise of extreme performance at compelling price points with the new Sun Fire V20z server featuring the screaming performance of the AMD Opteron processors and all the benefits of the Sun Java(tm) Enterprise System running on either the Solaris(tm) Operating System or Linux. Sun also announced new innovations to the Sun Fire B1600 blade platform, including the new Sun Fire B200x dual processor x86 blade and the newest edition of Sun’s N1(tm) Grid Provisioning Server, which allows customers to seamlessly mix, match and manage x86 and UltraSPARC(r) blades running either the Solaris Operating System or Linux as one pool of resources.

“Last November, Sun announced our alliance with AMD,” said Neil Knox, executive vice president, Volume Systems Products, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “And we are already ahead with the first in a complete family of AMD Opteron processor-based systems. This is yet another demonstration of Sun’s strategy to leverage industry economics to bring customers extreme performance at compelling price points with the enterprise-class benefits of the Java Enterprise System for Solaris and Linux.”

Sun and AMD Deliver Network Computing Expertise

Starting at $2,795 (USD), the high-performance Sun Fire V20z features dual AMD Opteron x86 32/64-bit processors and is capable of running Solaris x86 as well as Red Hat and SUSE Linux. The SunFire V20z is priced lower than IBM’s Opteron offerings.

“With Sun’s AMD Opteron processor-based servers, IT customers will have unprecedented flexibility, choice and access to the performance of 32-bit computing with the power of 64-bit computing from a global enterprise leader like Sun,” said Dirk Meyer, senior vice president, Computation Products Group, AMD. “The number of software applications available to the enterprise has grown significantly. Through this alliance, we plan to develop innovative technology that enables enterprise customers to do what they need to do better, faster, more productively, and more cost-effectively than they could ever do before.”

As part of the Sun and AMD alliance, both companies are collaborating to optimize the performance of the Solaris Operating System, the Java technology platform and development tools for AMD Opteron processor-based systems. With the Java Enterprise System and N1 Grid Engine on the Solaris Operating System for the AMD Opteron processor, customers can also benefit from the seamless scalability from single systems to entire compute farms. Sun and AMD also intend to work jointly with the Linux community to define and promote a 64-bit UNIX(r)-Linux Application Binary Interface (ABI) to enable further interoperability. UNIX and Linux applications will be able to run natively on any operating systems supporting this ABI.

“Together Sun and Oracle are delivering a high performance enterprise platform on AMD Opteron processor-based systems,” said Chuck Rozwat, executive vice president, Server Technologies, Oracle Corporation. “The new Sun Fire V20z with Oracle’s highly scalable and flexible database provides customers cost-effective, 64-bit solutions to run mission critical applications.”

Mix, Match and Manage with Sun

Sun adds even more choice to its innovative mix, match and manage Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform with the new Intel Xeon dual-processor x86 Sun Fire B200x Blade Server and the enhanced N1 Grid Provisioning Server 3.1 Blades Edition. Sun is the only major vendor to offer a comprehensive blade platform, supporting both UltraSPARC and x86, Solaris OS and Linux and specialty networking blades for enhanced networking and security. Sun’s blade platform, fully configured with the new Sun Fire B200x, is up to 34 percent less expensive than a similarly configured blade platform from HP.

Ideal for Web Services deployment, enterprise infrastructure and compute farms, the Sun Fire B200x blade server offers customers superior choice and flexibility and offers the best price-performance and density in the 3U form factor blade space. Alongside the new Sun Fire B200x, Sun announces the enhanced N1 Grid Provisioning Server 3.1 Blades Edition, which enables customers to manage physical devices, such as blades, as a pool of virtualized resources. The N1 Grid Provisioning Server 3.1 Blades Edition is twice as fast as the previous version and can reduce server deployment time from weeks or days to minutes, simplifying blade server management and increasing server utilization. In addition, the new offering expands support for x86 blades and the Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing Blade.

New Upgrades and Price Cuts for Sun Fire and Netra Products

Sun also announced that the Sun Fire V240 server will now ship with 1.28 GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processors, increasing performance by up to 33 percent. Prices on the 2 processor, 2 GB memory, 2 disk standard configurations are being reduced by 18 percent on the Sun Fire V210 and 15 percent on the Sun Fire V240. Additionally, following the success of the Netra(tm) 240 DC, launched in December 2003, Sun today unveiled the Netra 240 AC, the industry’s lowest-priced 2-way ruggedized carrier-grade server, specially designed for the stringent needs of the telecommunications industry and government sector.

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, Sun Fire, Solaris, Java, N1, Netra 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 United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company Ltd.