Archive | 2004

Sun Microsystems Aids Customer Adoption of UltraSPARC(R) IV Technology Through Financing Promotions That Help Enable Cost-Effective Migration

Sun Microsystems Finance Celebrates Five-Year Anniversary with New Options that Reduce Cost and Complexity while Allowing Customers to Innovate

HOPKINTON, Mass. and SANTA CLARA, Calif.
Mach 24, 2004

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced programs aimed at helping customers adopt recently UltraSPARC[R] IV technologies as they become readily available in CYQ2 2004. The new offerings are timed with the five-year anniversary of Sun Microsystems Finance to emphasize Sun’s commitment to delivering end-to-end solutions. Since its inception as a global capability in 1999, the group has offered Sun customers competitive, innovative financing for their total Sun solution, reducing cost and complexity and enabling customers to continually innovate throughout their entire IT lifecycle.

“Financing is becoming a necessary component to competitive bids around the world regardless of economic conditions, particularly for customers concerned about technology obsolescence and total lifecycle solutions,” said Kris Snow, senior director of Sun Microsystems Finance. “Sun has seen an increase in financing needs from customers and potential customers that are looking to finance for a broad range of reasons including better cash-flow management and as a strategic part of their technology refresh program. Sun’s financing capabilities are designed to provide value, reduce complexity, and enable innovation for our customers.”

Sun Microsystems Finance Introduces UltraSPARC Processor Migration Plans

Aimed at reducing long-term cost and simplifying migration to UltraSPARC IV systems, Sun Microsystems Finance is introducing two special, limited-time offers that make it easy and affordable for customers to acquire UltraSPARC III technology today with a defined migration process to UltraSPARC IV systems:

1. UltraSPARC III Processor “50/50+5” Offer
To entice customers that traditionally prefer to purchase technology, Sun is offering the acquisition of UltraSPARC III processor-based Sun Fire 4800 and 6800 systems for 50 percent down with the remaining 50 percent due in 12 months. From month six onward, customers have the option to acquire an UltraSPARC IV processor upgrade kit, and spread the cost over five interest-free payments. Or they can roll the entire balance due into an attractive leasing plan.

2. UltraSPARC III Processor “Two Payments on Us” Lease Option
Sun is also currently offering a 24-month below market rate lease for UltraSPARC III processor -based Sun Fire 4800 and 6800 systems. As part of this promotion, Sun will pay the first two monthly payments with absolutely no cost to the customer. Additionally, customers have the option to acquire an UltraSPARC IV processor upgrade kit, at any time after month six with no interest, by simply dividing the upgrade cost by the remaining term of the lease and adding the resulting sum to the existing monthly payment.

Both plans are available in the U.S. through Sun sales and Sun authorized iForce(sm) Partners. Offers expire June 30, 2004. All transactions subject to Sun Microsystems Finance credit and/or investment approval.

For more information on the UltraSPARC III processor migration plans please visit: www.sun.com/leasing.

Sun Microsystems Finance Completes Sun’s End-to-End Offering

In the five years since its inception as a global capability, Sun Microsystems Finance has grown from having hundreds of millions to over $1.5 billion in assets under management.

A reflection of the business unit’s rapid growth, Sun Microsystems Finance currently provides financing solutions to 90% of Sun’s customer base and handles transactions from $10,000 to $5 million. Today, Sun Microsystems Finance operates in 25 countries worldwide providing customers with competitive, total solutions financing for all Sun hardware, software, services and related third-party products.

Whether a large or small Sun implementation, Sun Microsystems Finance helps provide customers with flexible, highly affordable financing while easing migration to new technology and providing protection from technology obsolescence.

“For Intuit, it’s been the willingess of Sun Microsystems Finance to put together unique programs with creative terms that met our specific requirements,” said Ike Schneider, director of Enteprise Computing at Intuit. “As we learned in our extensive search for a financing source, price and flexibility are equally imperative when choosing a financing solution. Business factors change, and if we want to shorten or lengthen our product refresh cycles, with Sun Microsystems Finance we can.”

Finance Options Designed for the Total Solution

The expanding range of programs offered by Sun Microsystems Finance offer solutions for current IT challenges:

  • Increasing Value – Sun Microsystems Finance can provide flexible financing plans that lower the total cost of IT ownership throughout the entire lifecycle. Partnering with Sun Microsystems Finance can enable Sun customers to match payment plans, risk, and upgrade cycles to their business needs.
  • Driving Innovation – Working with Sun Microsystems Finance, customers’ financial solutions enable innovation. The business unit works closely with customers to tailor programs that meet their IT requirements today and offer easy refresh and upgrade paths to ensure continuous innovation tomorrow.
  • Reducing Complexity – Financing through Sun Finance provides customers with one point of contact and one monthly invoice. Additionally, financing offers customers a predictable upgrade path enabling them to more effectively stay ahead of the technology curve.

“Sun Microsystems Finance created a customized plan that enabled us to match our monthly lease payments to our incoming revenues,” said Frank Gabriel, vice president of Finance for the State University of New York (SUNY). “They provided extremely competitive financing terms — better than other financing alternatives with less paperwork. Their staff operated very professionally and worked with us through a smooth process without complications. Looking back, I’d say we negotiated a win-win solution for both parties.”

The growing Sun Microsystems Finance product portfolio aims to offer tailored options for different needs including:

  • Infrastructure Solutions Leasing which includes the recently expanded HP Away Migration Lease that helps allow HP customers to easily and affordably migrate to end-to-end Sun systems built with UltraSPARC and Sun Fire servers running the secure and scalable Solaris Operating System and Sun StorEdge(tm) arrays, providing a no-cost deferral period of up to 90 days for the migration, followed by below market rate financing for 36 months for the entire Sun Infrastructure Solution, including Sun hardware, software and services for qualifying customers.

The HP Away Lease is available in the US and Asia-Pacific through June 30, 2004. All transactions subject to Sun Microsystems Finance credit and/or investment approval.

  • SMF Capacity Management Plans can allow customers to lower the initial investment costs of Sun solutions by tying payments to the actual amount of technology used, as measured in storage or processor capacityàpaving the way for a true utility computing model.
  • Bundled Financing like the Sun Microsystems Finance Services Bundle plan offers qualifying customers 0% financing on services purchased with hardware equipment. This offering has driven more than $100 million in volume for nearly 200 customers in the U.S.

This offer is available in the US only through June 30, 2004. All transactions subject to Sun Microsystems Finance credit and/or investment approval.

For more information on Sun Microsystems Finance, please visit http://www.sun.com/leasing/

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, Sun Fire, Sun StorEdge, iForce 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.

      

Sun Continues Strong Momentum In High Performance And Technical Computing (HPTC) Market

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

HOPKINTON, Mass. and SANTA CLARA, Calif.
April 26 , 2004

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.

      

Sun Expands HP Away Migration Program To Include Transistion Path for Threatened HP-UX Customers

Program Continues Momentum with Over 80 Tru64 Customer Migrations

SANTA CLARA, Calif.
April 25, 2004

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.

 

      

Sun Makes Solaris And Linux Faster With New X86 Based Systems

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

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.
April 10, 2004

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.

      

SUN MICROSYSTEMS CONTINUES TO DELIVER LEADING SYSTEMS INFRASTRUCTURE TO ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE CUSTOMERS

Company Reports Surge of New Solaris (OS) Customers Including Emerson, HM Prisons Service, Northumberland County Council and University of Virginia

ORACLE APPSWORLD, San Diego
January 27, 2004

Continuing to meet customers’ demand for bottom-line pricing, innovation and choice, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that in the last six months a bevy of new customers has selected Oracle(R) E-Business Suite 11i on the Sun Solaris Operating System (OS). As a leading platform for over 35 percent of Oracle E-Business Suite implementations, Sun has recently attracted additional customers around the globe, including Emerson, HM Prisons Service (UK), Northumberland County Council and University of Virginia.

Anchored by decades of joint technology collaboration, Sun and Oracle continue to offer completely tested and configured Oracle E-Business Suite solutions for companies of any size–from enterprise to mid-market. In addition to the popular Solaris OS SPARC(R) platform, customers can deploy Oracle E-Business Suite on industry-standard Red Hat and SuSE distributions of Linux on Sun x86 platforms.

Mutual Commitment

As part of the long-standing alliance, Sun and Oracle share a strong commitment to use each other’s products and technologies in their respective internal IT deployments. For Sun, Oracle Financials and Order Management form the cornerstone of its consolidated global ERP environment. For Oracle, a multitude of Sun servers power parts of its software development, hosting environments and data center operations, including implementation of Oracle’s single global instance for ERP.

Dedicated Competency Centers for Oracle

For maximum investment protection, new and existing Sun and Oracle customers can also leverage the real-world technology and expertise available at the Sun iForce Competency Centers for Oracle (SOATC). These facilities can offer a no-cost opportunity to test and confirm system sizing, configuration and architecture before implementing solutions.

Customer Successes @ OAW

Established customers running the Oracle E-Business Suite on the Sun platform such as Edmonton Public Schools are scheduled to present their success stories in the Sun booth (#1213) at Oracle AppsWorld in San Diego, starting January 27, 2004. Some of the highlights from these testimonials include:

Edmonton Public Schools

The Edmonton, Alberta, public school system is leveraging the Sun platform and Oracle databases for all its high-end administrative computing needs. In addition, the school district chose the Oracle E-Business Suite to provide its financial applications. Already, the Sun and Oracle solutions are delivering 20 percent higher user productivity and 75 percent shorter month-end processing, compared with the previous mainframe-based applications.

“A lot of our success is due to the excellent synergy between Sun and Oracle, one of the reasons why we’ve standardized on them for all of our high-end computing needs,” said Brenda Boychuk, Senior Data Base Analyst, Edmonton Public Schools. “Sun and Oracle have a seven-year track record of delivering stable, reliable service to the school system.”

Specific schedules for customer presentations will be available at the Sun booth.

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, iForce 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 US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.

 

      

SUN INSTITUTES HPTC ALLIANCE PARTNER PROGRAM TO BOLSTER HPTC SOLUTIONS AND OFFER CHOICE FOR CUSTOMERS

January 20, 2004

Sun Collaborates with Interconnect Partners to Design and Optimize Network Performance; Continues Growth in Linux-Based HPTC Cluster Deployments Alongside Solaris

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – January 20, 2004 – Increasing its momentum and recent growth in the high performance and technical computing (HPTC) market, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today added an array of interconnect technology companies as part of 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. HPTC Alliance partners introduced by Sun today include Infinicon, Force10 Networks, Mellanox, Myrinet, Quadrics, Topspin Communications and Voltaire.

“Sun’s HPTC Alliance Partner Program provides Sun customers with a wide range of advanced technologies and allows us to tailor solutions to specific customer needs,” said Shahin Khan, vice president of the HPTC business unit at Sun. “We’re leading the HPTC market with our UltraSPARC® and Solaris-based servers and HPTC solutions, and through a spike in deployments of Sun x86-based, Linux clusters. With next generation Opteron-based systems on the horizon, Sun HPTC Alliance partners can reach and serve an even larger segment of the market.”

These new industry alliances can immediately benefit many performance-hungry HPTC customers using clusters and grids to support large-scale scientific and exploratory projects. These include many NSF-funded projects as well as global efforts like the TeraGrid and the current Mars rover explorations which use Sun systems including the Solaris platform and Java technology.

The HPTC business unit at Sun has attracted major customer wins in market segments including education, as customers look to maximize their existing resources through grid and cluster computing. To foster innovative learning, Sun is committed to bringing collaboration in the academic environment for both research and development, as well as high performance computing across the enterprise for intensive compute environments within academia. Many universities make extensive use of Sun and its partner’s technologies advantageously to achieve their computing goals.

At Pennsylvania State University, Sun’s systems are part of the Pleiades Cluster which analyzes data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Pleiades is one component of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Data Grid and a member of the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL), an international computational laboratory that supports experimentation in grid-enabled, data-intensive scientific computing.

“A combination of clustered Sun Fire V60x servers and an InfiniBand interconnect from a Sun partner demonstrates how Sun and its HPTC partners create a total solution that gives us the performance we need in our HPC environment,” said Vijay Agarwala, Director, High Performance Computing and Visualization at the Pennsylvania State University.

The new HPTC Alliance partners announced today include the following interconnect technology companies:

  • Force10 Networks – Force10 Networks is the pioneer in scalable resiliency for high performance switching and routing. Today, many of the world’s largest Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks depend on Force10’s Networks.
  • Infinicon – Leveraging the breakthrough advances of the InfiniBand architecture, Infinicon Systems offers a complete systems solution for enabling data centers to migrate to a fabric/grid model of computing, integrating seamlessly into today’s Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks.
  • Mellanox – Mellanox is the leading supplier of InfiniBand semiconductors, providing complete solutions including switches, host channel adapters, and target channel adapters to the server, communications, data storage, and embedded markets. Mellanox InfiniBand interconnect solutions today provide over eight times the performance of Ethernet, and over three times the performance of proprietary interconnects.
  • Myricom – Myricom created Myrinet, the leading high-speed network for connecting computers to form clusters used for computationally demanding scientific and engineering applications, and for data-intensive web and database applications. There are thousands of Myrinet clusters in use world-wide, including several systems with more than 1000 processors.
  • Quadrics – Quadrics is a leading supplier and developer of high performance networking products and resource management software. Quadrics’ product families are based on internally developed ASICs, firmware and software technologies, and offer customers high performance, scalability and flexibility, enabling large clusters of these processing units to be connected together.
  • Topspin Communications – Topspin is a leader in server virtualization, delivering the industry’s first of data center infrastructure designed to allow virtual servers to be created by interconnecting server, storage, and networking resources on-demand.
  • Voltaire – Voltaire is a leading provider of high performance InfiniBand solutions that improve the performance and utilization of clusters and advanced computing grids. Voltaire’s standards-based InfiniBand hardware and software solutions feature modular, advanced I/O capabilities for seamless connectivity to IP and storage networks and are used by prestigious national labs and universities to power HPC clusters and applications.

Today’s announcement follows the December 2003, findings from International Data Corporation (IDC) declaring Sun as the largest volume HPTC vendor according to its Q3CY03 Worldwide Technical Server report. Sun achieved this standing in part through large Sun Fire V60x cluster configurations that appeared on the Top 500 Supercomputers list announced in November 2003. For a more detailed report see the IDC High Performance Technical Computer Qview Report, 11/24/03

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.