Leading Australian Utility Provider Saves Time and Money by Replacing HP Tru64 Infrastructure With Sun Microsystems Platform

ActewAGL Powers Datacenter With Sun Fire v440 Servers and Solaris OS; Achieves Performance Gains of Up to 70 Percent

SANTA CLARA, Calif.,
June 20, 2005

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), today announced that Canberra, Australia-based utility provider ActewAGL has selected it as its IT infrastructure platform of choice for its core applications. The deal is another significant win for Sun’s HP-Away Migration Program, launched in 2003 and designed to help companies port their applications from HP’s AlphaServer/Tru64 platform to to Sun’s Solaris platform, running on UltraSPARC-based Sun Fire servers.

The migration to Sun has resulted in significant benefits for ActewAGL, including an average 50 percent improvement in performance, lower maintenance costs and ease of infrastructure management. The company also estimates it will save an additional $20,000 in annual maintenance costs by moving to Sun.

“We no longer had any faith in HP’s Tru64 technology and required alternative systems to provide 64-bit computing capability,” said Carsten Larsen, Chief Information Officer for ActewAGL. “Upon looking at what the market had to offer, we chose Sun Fire systems and the Solaris OS because it provided a simple yet robust, cost-effective solution.”

“We had reached the end of the line with our HP AlphaServer platform,” added Debesh Halder, Manager, Unix Systems, ActewAGL. “The technology was four years old and struggling to cope with increased demand. However, we were not keen to move to the HP-Intel developed Itanium architecture, which is a relatively new technology. We were looking for a stable, proven platform and Sun was it.”

Established in October 2000, ActewAGL is Australia’s first multi-utility. It provides electricity, natural gas, water and wastewater services to more than 300,000 residential, business and government customers in the Australian Capital Territory. ActewAGL began offering telephony, high-speed data and video services from a number of providers in February 2004 after reaching an agreement with TransACT Capital Communications.

ActewAGL has installed six Sun Fire V440 servers, two Sun(TM) Rack 900 hardware cabinets and two K Virtual Machines (KVM) switches and migrated its core applications to the Sun Solaris Operating System. The project took about 12 months to complete, which included research, selection, procurement, custom development, testing and implementation. It was finished on time and within budget with help from Sun Microsystems.

Since going live with the Sun platform, ActewAGL has seen system performance improve by up to 70 percent. “A report that used to take 10 minutes to generate can now be completed in five minutes,” said Halder. “Staff can also login to financial applications via the Web, which is faster and more convenient for them. Productivity has improved and they are also much happier.”

Maintenance costs have been reduced. “The infrastructure is reliable, easy to support and the competitive Sun licensing structure has resulted in significant savings for ActewAGL,” said Halder. Security has also been bolstered with Sun’s enhanced safety features and robust architecture.

“We continually hear from customers that they’re reluctant to migrate their critical applications to the pricier, untested Itanium architecture,” said Larry Singer, senior vice president and strategic insights officer, Sun Microsystems. “Sun provides an excellent alternative. Our solutions are proven, include a broad base of ISV applications and importantly, protect customers’ investments in a new software infrastructure. We expect our data center migration programs to see continued momentum in coming quarters.”

For more information regarding Sun’s data center migration programs, please visit: http://www.sun.com/datacenter/migration/


About ActewAGL

ActewAGL was formed in October 2000 when the Australian Gas Light Company (AGL), a major private sector group, and ACTEW Corporation, a government-owned enterprise, entered into Australia’s first utility joint venture. It is Australia’s first multi-utility, offering electricity, natural gas, water and wastewater services. In February 2004 ActewAGL entered into a management agreement with TransACT Capital Communications to offer telephony, high-speed data and video services from a number of providers to residential, business and government customers in the ACT.


About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world’s most important markets. Sun’s philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Fire V440, Solaris, Sun Rack 900 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