Archive | August, 2004

Customers and Partners Turn to Sun’s New AMD Opteron Processor-Based Workstations For Better Performance and Increased Flexibility at a Lower Price

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that customers, developers and partners are rapidly adopting the new Sun Java Workstations based on AMD Opteron processors for their technical and heavy duty workloads across a range of industries, including document management, life sciences, oil & gas, digital content creation and software development. With support for the Solaris Operating System (OS), Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux or Microsoft Windows, these workstations give customers maximum flexibility for growth at industry-leading price/performance. Customers also benefit from the ability to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications within a single architecture.

“The superior performance, visualization-class graphics and increased memory of the new Sun Java Workstations make them ideal for technical applications in multiple industries,” said Brian Healy, director of workstation product marketing at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Whether they’re used for product design, digital content creation or seismic data analysis, these workstations provide customers leading price/performance with a proven 32- to 64-bit growth path.”

Sun Java Workstations Give Xerox a Performance Edge for Document Reproduction

Xerox Corporation evaluated and purchased the new Sun Java Workstation W1100z because of the tremendous performance gains it saw with the new AMD Opteron processor-based systems. The units are used to manage document reproduction control stations for customers typically overseeing very large print jobs.

“The AMD Opteron processor-based workstations are an excellent addition to the Sun product line and nicely complement its SPARC-based offerings,” said Rich Lauria, manager, production controller unit, Xerox Corporation. “We are consistently seeking ways to provide more value to our customers, and the benchmark price/performance achieved by the Sun Java Workstation W1100z make it an attractive solution for several demanding product applications.”

Sun and NVIDIA Team to Deliver Leading Next-Generation Graphics with Sun Java Workstations

Through a strategic alliance with NVIDIA, Sun is shipping NVIDIA Quadro graphics technology with the Sun Java Workstations, offering the ultimate in performance, precision, programmability and quality. These professional graphics solutions allow Sun to deliver industry-leading two- and three-dimension performance improvements, including higher bus bandwidth, increased memory bandwidth, improved rendering speeds and the ability to deploy large data sets (up to 16 GB in size) across multiple operating systems. Customers in CAD/CAM, EDA, DCC, life sciences, oil & gas, defense, scientific research, financial services and software engineering can all reap the benefits of these advanced workstation solutions. Sun and NVIDIA will continue to work together to deliver new NVIDIA technologies in future Sun products.

“With more than 10 years of 64-bit computing expertise and over 2 million 64-bit workstations sold, Sun has long been a leader in the 64-bit computing market,” said Jeff Fisher, executive vice president of sales at NVIDIA. “Sun continued that trend by introducing a complete portfolio of industry-leading x86 AMD Opteron processor-based workstations, and Sun is once again primed to make a profound impact on the workstation market.”

Sun Java Workstations Power Biomedical “BioWall” Visualization Environment

Biomedical researchers and scientists at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) located at the University of California, San Diego use Sun Java Workstations, NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics and partner technologies to power the “BioWall Tiled Display.” This 20-tile “wall” of high-resolution flat-panel displays, measuring five monitors across and four monitors high and supporting 40 megapixels, is used to project incredibly detailed two- and three-dimensional images, allowing scientists to better understand biological structures and functional relationships in cells and tissues.

“The extreme graphics capabilities and large per-tile memory footprint of the AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Java Workstations allow us to interactively visualize our massive three-dimensional datasets that can measure as large as 200 GB at full resolution,” said Dr. Mark Ellisman, NCMIR director. “This is only possible by using the extensive hardware and systems expertise of Sun and working closely with partners at the Electronics Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the Rocks Clustering Group at SDSC. Taken together, this allows us to focus on our biomedical science drivers, maximize our current resources, and save both time and money.”

Sun Makes Worldwide Revenue and Unit Market Share Gains During the Second Quarter of 2004

Recent market share data released by IDC, a leading provider of global IT research and advice, confirms Sun’s position for the 40th consecutive quarter as the undisputed leader in Traditional Workstation (TWS) unit shipments and revenue, with both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year share increases. According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Workstation QView, Sun’s workstations represent 71.1% of all worldwide units shipped in the Traditional Workstation Market, gaining 1 market share point on a quarter-to-quarter basis and nearly 2 points on an annual basis. Sun workstations account for nearly 50% of worldwide revenue market share in the traditional UNIX/RISC platform segment.

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, Java and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Sun Highlights More Than 150 Customers That Migrated to Sun as a Result of HP Ending Support for AlphaServer Tru64 Servers and Its Lack of Commitment to HP-UX

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW – News) today announced that it is expanding the successful HP Away migration program to include a migration path to Sun’s AMD Opteron processor-based workstations and servers. Sun is combining its 64-bit enterprise computing experience with the AMD Opteron processor, and providing additional value with the Solaris operating system, the Sun Java Enterprise Software, N1, Linux and the Java Desktop System, to create systems with unmatched security, scalability and availability from the desktop to the enterprise. At the heart of the HP Away migration program is the Solaris operating system, the clear alternative for HP customers frustrated with HP’s lack of commitment to its UNIX operating system.

“HP is forcing customers to migrate from one platform to another, but customers are balking because HP has limited credibility with HP-UX,” said Larry Singer, Sun’s senior vice president, strategic insights officer. “By migrating more than 150 HP customers to Sun systems running SPARC we’ve proven there is a demand to find a better alternative. Now for customers that want to run UNIX on x86 we’re offering the advantage of cheaper, better performing, higher functioning systems with our Opteron platform.”

Sun has effectively upstaged HP by offering systems that support Linux, can offer better performance, and deliver a clear path to Solaris for customers that want to run Unix. In addition, Sun is helping developers and ISVs protect their technology investments by making it easy to port from HP to Sun systems based on the AMD Opteron processor, through the Migration to Sun platforms program.

Sun’s AMD Opteron Processor Advantage
(www.sun.com/executives/realitycheck/reality-080904.html)

Sun offers the industry’s best performing and the most complete line of AMD Opteron processor-based servers with the two processor Sun Fire V20z server and the four processor Sun Fire V40z server. The Sun Fire V40z server demonstrated best performance among all four CPU x86 servers in 2-tier SAP Sales and Distribution Standard Application Benchmark. It performs up to 23% better than a comparably equipped HP ProLiant Xeon-based server and up to 6.5% better than HP’s 4-way Opteron-based server (*). And, Sun has worked closely with AMD to optimize the Solaris Operating System, Linux, and the Java Enterprise System-as well as Microsoft Windows-to run on the systems.

Workstation customers can also turn to Sun for AMD Opteron processor-based systems. Sun now offers leading performance with its new Sun Java Workstation W1100z and Sun Java Workstation W2100z. These systems are offered with the latest release of the Java Desktop System running either the Solaris x86 OS or Linux.

“Sun offers better value and performance on servers based on industry standard components-with the added advantage of our 64-bit heritage in operating systems and broad enterprise application support,” said John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun’s Network Systems Group. “We have the most complete line of Opteron servers, and more are on the way. We’re the only company that delivers an enterprise proven UNIX operating system on x86 with Solaris. For customers that want to run Linux we provide systems with screaming performance and broad application support. What I’d like to say to HP customers is you can rest peacefully knowing that Sun is offering a brighter future.”

Sun Highlights Customer Migrations

The HP Away program was launched last year to help offer a no-risk alternative for customers concerned by HP’s announced end-of-life of its AlphaServer Tru64 platform. Then earlier this year, the program was expanded to include all HP customers using the HP-UX operating system-a lifeline to customers frustrated with HP’s continued product delays and security issues (for more detail on security flaws, see: www.secunia.com/advisories/12246/).

Since the program was introduced, Sun has successfully migrated more than 150 customers. The following describe how two of these customers have benefited from moving to a Sun environment:

TKEC (Taiwan): Tsann Kuen Group, the leader of small home appliances and 3C retail chain store businesses in Taiwan and China, migrated its existing HP server environment to new Sun servers to build and support a highly available and scalable ERP platform. The new architecture will be re-enforced with additional resources to support the continuous growth of ERP application users. Tsann Kuen chose a Sun Fire 12K server running the Solaris OS and StorEdge 9970 to ensure a more stable and secured operating system.

Universidade Luterana do Brasil (ULBRA): ULBRA’s IT department supports the IT needs for ULBRA hospital, which needed more compute power to implement new applications for the hospital administration. The university’s overall administrative computing systems were demanding more power than their HP AlphaServer Tru64 infrastructure was providing. By migrating to two Sun Fire 4800 servers in a Sun Cluster environment, and a Sun backup solution with capacity of more than 5TB, the university now has the power and reliability it needs. The Sun solution runs the hospital’s main systems replication, as well as the primary, high school, college and Ph.D databases, payroll, and management information. By moving from the old HP platform to the new Sun environment, ULBRA’s applications run almost five times faster.

New Migration Tools

The HP Away migration program is a shared risk model in which Sun and partners work with customers to deploy an effective migration solution. Today Sun is expanding this program with new tools and offerings targeted to help customers adopt Sun’s low cost x86 solutions. Specifically, these programs are:

• A complete set of Solaris x86 tools and resources to move to the Solaris x86 OS.
• Special promotions for developers and enterprise customers on the new Sun Fire V20z server for up to 41% off the retail price, and a three-year subscription to the Solaris OS.
• Solaris Enterprise Subscription x86 packages for up to 80% off competitors’ offerings.
• Special financing for qualifying customers: no payments, no interest until 2005; 3.9% financing to ease transition to Solaris x86 and AMD Opteron-based servers. Certain terms and conditions apply. Subject to credit approval. Exact interest rate may very.

For more information on the HP Away migration program go to www.sun.com/datacenter/migration/hp_offer.html. For more information on the Migration to Sun platforms developers program go to www.sun.com/partners/migration.

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, Sun Fire, Java StorEdge, Sun Cluster, 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.

* Sun Fire V40z server (4xAMD Opteron Model 850 2.4 GHz processors, 128 KB L1 cache, 1MB L2 cache, 32 GB main memory) running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 (64-bit), Oracle 9i, SAP 4.70 (32-bit), has achieved the result of 820 SAP SD benchmark users with 1.95 seconds average dialog response time and measured throughput of 247,000 dialog steps per hour (or 82,330 fully processed line items per hour), as of August 12, 2004. The benchmark fully complies with the SAP Benchmark Council regulations and have been audited and certified by SAP AG. SAP certification number 2004044. The comparison based on results with certification numbers 2004013 and 2004024. For the latest results, see: http://www.sap.com/benchmark/