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
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