National, State and Local Governments Embrace Sun Technology to Deliver Services to Citizens
During its quarterly Network Computing ’05 (NC05Q2) launch today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) highlighted growing worldwide momentum with governments in the United States and abroad, as well as partners like GTSI and Boeing. Sun’s unwavering commitment to delivering secure and scalable technology has led to next-generation solutions for international, national, state and local governments – benefiting partners, customers and citizens.
“For the past 20 years, Sun has provided government agencies with enterprise solutions backed by military-grade security. We consistently strive to meet the needs of world leaders and their constituents, using technology as a way to provide government services and protect personal information, as well as equip government employees with the tools they need to be successful,” said Clark Masters, executive vice president Global Industries and president, Sun Federal.
Recent developments among Sun and its partners include:
- GTSI Corp., one of the largest technology suppliers to the Department of Defense (DoD) is using the Sun Java(TM) System RFID Software to meet the DoD’s RFID requirements. This software, combined with the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS), allows GTSI to obtain critical information on product shipments and orders for the DoD.
- Tadpole Computer, Inc., a California-headquartered company that manufactures Sun-compatible mobile computers, signed an agreement with Sun to include its products on Sun’s government price list. Tadpole’s solutions are used extensively for deployable military applications, and Sun and Tadpole have already teamed on large multi-million dollar sales of deployable hardware into two government programs.
- Boeing recently selected JXTA(TM) Technology to provide the peer-to-peer (P2P) discovery service for the System of Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE) for the U.S. Army’s multi-billion dollar Future Combat Systems (FCS) initiative.
- Department of the Air Force Headquarters Operations and Sustainment Systems Group was the first government organization to completely implement a Java(SM) Center of Excellence, which is designed to provide organizations like the United States Air Force with proven and tested methodologies for Java technology-based application development.
In addition to a strong tradition of collaboration on specific projects, in September 2004, Sun opened its new iForce(SM) Solution Center for government. This facility provides the resources and support to build and test real-world environments that government and commercial customers can leverage more quickly, securely and reliably to help define and solve business problems and integration challenges. The “test before you invest” methodology helps to promote interoperability across multi-vendor solutions, as the center is designed to mitigate risk, reduce cost and assist in the development of solutions that address specific business processes.
Sun’s strong presence in the U.S. government market is matched by its goal to assist governments worldwide in providing the best technologies to their constituents. The Belgian Ministry of Finance has awarded Sun its Identity Access and Management project. Sun will help develop a role- and rule-based access control solution to manage the identities of 35,000 civil servants and contractors. Other projects around the world include implementing one of the world’s largest archiving projects at the D-sseldorf-based Rheinprovinz State Insurance Institution, where Sun masterminded the development of the entire systems landscape, from database and archive clusters, to disk and tape memories. As one of Germany’s leading statutory pension insurers, the State Insurance Institution has 4,300 employees and 6.6 million clients in North Rhine-Westphalia. It is estimated that the digital archiving of more than 1.3 million old files will save millions of Euro.
On the state and local level, the City of Oakland has recently expanded its relationship with Sun after cutting payroll processing time from four days on its former systems to seven hours on the Sun Fire(TM) 15K server. The City of Oakland then turned to Sun for an enterprise-scale server refresh and storage upgrade to automate more of its business processes. By increasing its computing capacity, the City of Oakland anticipates migrating applications from expensive legacy servers, providing the compute resources required for new applications, while continuing to experience high levels of performance and system availability as it processes payroll, manages its finances and carries out human resources activities.
“Sun’s unwavering dedication to global, national, state and local governments is evident in everything we do. From the Government iForce Center to our position in the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, which works to ensure that DoD and intelligence community information is easily interoperable, we believe our strengths in security and scalability are unmatched and respected, and we will continue to innovate for governments around the world so they can better serve their populations,” said Masters.
Sun’s NC05Q2 Web event is available at: http://www.sun.com/nc/05q2. More information on today’s announcements, including full Press Releases and product details, can be viewed at Sun’s online press kit: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/networkcomputing05q2/.
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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