Archive | 2005

First Product in New Line Offers TEMs a Completely Integrated SS7 Solution with Trillium Binary Code, Line Card and Management Software

Continuous Computing® Corporation, global provider of high availability platform solutions that enable telecom equipment manufacturers to rapidly deploy converged communications, today announced the release of its new Trillium®+plus product line of Network Service-Ready Platforms™. The first product in the new line, Trillium+plus ISUP, is a high-performance SS7 solution that delivers all the standard Trillium ISUP features and has the added benefit of quick and easy integration into an existing network. With Trillium+plus products, telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) can focus on developing the application layer of any network element and have it performing within weeks rather than months.

Trillium+plus ISUP is a pre-integrated signaling solution that enables rapid Signaling System 7 (SS7) deployments in IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), 3G wireless and Next Generation Networks (NGN). Comprised of high-performance Trillium ISDN User Part (ISUP) binary code, a line card that scales from two to 128 links in PMC or PCI form factors, and integrated management software, Trillium+plus ISUP enables TEMs to simplify and accelerate the deployment of SS7 network nodes.

“Trillium+plus represents a significant milestone in our product evolution,” said Ken Kalb, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Continuous Computing. “We continue to offer our complete range of industry-leading Trillium protocol software in source code form, and now Trillium+plus allows our customers the option of buying Trillium protocol stacks as pre-integrated, pre-certified and pre-tested binary solutions. In effect, customers can buy in at multiple levels of integration – either as building blocks or as complete integrated solutions.”

Garrett Choi, general manager of Continuous Computing’s Trillium business unit, stated, “The differentiating aspects of Trillium+plus products include the patented distributed fault-tolerant and high-availability (DFT/HA) architecture; the safety and security of having source code available; and significant price and performance advantages over alternatives. Support for multiple form factors such as AdvancedTCA and CompactPCI is also a key benefit.”

According to Chad Hart, senior analyst for Venture Development Corporation, “One of the biggest challenges for TEMs evaluating the move to AdvancedTCA platforms is the migration path of existing solutions such as PMC-based SS7 blades to the emerging AMC form factor. With Trillium+plus, Continuous Computing is in a position to offer true pre-integrated solutions to customers around the globe with a technology roadmap that includes AdvancedTCA. The added advantage is inherent support for various country and industry-specific variants plus the field-proven maturity of the underlying Trillium protocol signaling technology.”

Trillium+plus ISUP includes an integrated management software layer that combines all necessary stack configuration, alarming, reporting, fault management and element management functions. The software provides multiple customer interface options for industry-standard management application program interfaces (APIs) including C++, Command Line Interface (CLI), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Web-based graphical user interface (GUI). The solution also offers a high-level application API that facilitates rapid integration; the package is available for both Linux and Solaris.

Trillium+plus ISUP is available now. Future Trillium+plus product line releases will include Signaling Gateway solutions as well as Mobile Application Part (MAP), Intelligent Network Application Part (INAP) and CAMEL Application Part (CAP) packages for Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) applications.

More information, including a detailed explanation of the company’s SUPERCOMM Trade-In Special, which provides customers the opportunity to receive up to $6,000 credit toward the purchase of a Trillium+plus ISUP solution, is available on Continuous Computing’s web site at http://www.ccpu.com/2005/plus2/. A product demonstration will be shown in the company’s SUPERCOMM trade show booth (#32076) at Chicago’s McCormick Place from June 7 to 9.

About Continuous Computing

Continuous Computing ® provides high availability platform solutions that enable telecom equipment manufacturers to rapidly deploy converged communications. The company supplies wireless and VoIP integrated solutions to over 125 customers worldwide. Products include Trillium ® protocol software; AdvancedTCA and CompactPCI systems; upSuite ® platform management; and Network Service-Ready Platforms ™ . Learn more at www.ccpu.com.

• Continuous Computing is the leading provider of SPARC based high-availability platform solutions for telecom equipment manufacturers. With customers that include Cisco, Lucent, Ericsson, Alcatel, Motorola, Siemens, Sonus Networks, and others, Continuous Computing has achieved tremendous success in the areas of voice over packet, wireless, and optical infrastructure.   Within these markets, we offer turnkey system solutions for every element below the application software layer. These elements include:
• SPARC based single board computers
• Gigabit Ethernet switches
• Out-of-band system management and alarming
• Power supplies, backplanes, and I/O boards
• Award winning, high-availability middleware for Solaris

Continuous Computing is an Associate member of the Intel Communications Alliance.
The Intel Communications Alliance is a member-based program comprised of communications and embedded developers and solution providers. Members are committed to providing a strategic supply of standards-based solutions to the communications and embedded market segments. For more information, please visit: www.intel.com/go/ica

Deal Strengthens Sun’s Competitive Position in One of the Fastest Growing, Most Dynamic Segments of Storage Market

Sun Microsystems,Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase all intellectual property rights of Procom Technology, Inc. relating to Procom’s Network Attached Storage (NAS) offerings in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $50M.

“The entire storage marketplace is clearly moving toward industry-standard platforms and operating systems,” said Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer, Sun Microsystems.“As a provider of both, with our leading volume platforms and the Solaris operating system, Sun is uniquely positioned to leverage Procom’s technology to drive down the cost of NAS appliances for customers, while aiming to drive margin opportunities for Sun.”

Procom, a provider of a broad range of NAS storage systems,and Sun have had an existing software licensing agreement in place since April 2004. As a result of that agreement, Procom technology is already embedded and currently shipping within the Sun StorEdge 5000 Family of NAS Appliances. With this new agreement, Sun will own the intellectual property rights relating to this technology and gain additional engineering expertise, enabling it to build future NAS and next-generation file-based storage systems much faster and more cost-effectively.

“Sun’s NAS offerings serve as the central building blocks of some of our most compelling solutions, including the Sun StorEdge 5310 Compliance Archiving System which helps customers comply with government regulations and data integrity requirements,” said Mark Canepa, executive vice president of network storage, Sun Microsystems. “Bolstering our NAS portfolio with the acquisition of Procom’s technology reflects our ongoing commitment to the storage market.”

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and the approval of Procom’s shareholders. The acquisition is expected to close in June 2005. More details about the acquisition will be available at this time.

This Press Releases contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements include statements regarding future results or financial performance of Sun Microsystems, Inc., including statements relating to the acquisition of certain assets of Procom,strengthening Sun’s position in the storage market, enabling Sun to build future NAS and next-generation file-based storage systems much faster and more cost-effectively, the acquisition of Procom’s assets in an all cash transaction, and the expected close of the acquisition in June 2005. Such statements are just predictions and involve risks and uncertainties such that actual results and performance may differ materially. Factors that might cause such a difference include the closing of the acquisition, successful integration of Procom’s assets and employees into Sun, building future NAS and next-generation file-based storage systems, Sun’s inability to compete successfully in the highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, failure to retain key employees, cancellation or delay of projects, increased competition and continued adverse general economic conditions in the U.S. and internationally. These and other risks are detailed from time to time in Sun’s periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Sun’s annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2004 and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended September 26,2004, December 26, 2004 and March 27, 2005.

About Procom Technology

Irvine,Calif.-based Procom Technology has designed and produced innovative storage solutions since 1987 and is a value leader in enterprise-class NAS appliances that deliver industry-leading performance, manageability and availability. This value leadership is based on a unique combination of innovative appliance software,industry-standard hardware platforms, and proven high-availability and mirroring software. More information is available, toll free, at800-800-8600; via e-mail at info@procom.com;or on the Web at www.procom.com.

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, Java, N1 and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunMicrosystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

ACARD, the SCSI/IDE, RAID and storage solutions provider, will launch AEC-6898 and ARS-4800 on July 2005. This is an internal SATA RAID kit to meet the storage demand in small and mid-businesses. The SATA RAID kit has high stability, complete function of temperature, fan and hard drive monitoring. It is easy to install and maintain. For corporations this is a low-cost and high-performance solution.

The technology of SATA storage is becoming more and more mature, and has been highly appraised by the corporate MIS executives over the past year. Compared with IDE hard drive, SATA hard drive can perfectly support hot swap. Its stability and performance have been obviously increased. Besides, because its cost is lower than that of SCSI storage, its percentage of use in corporations has been increasing exponentially.

Among the SATA RAID kit, AEC-6898 is a RAID card with the function of RAID 5. It has 4 SATA channels for hard drives of 1.5Gbps, a 64-bit PCI bus, and lets a server perform highly in transfer. Its low profile and horizontal SATA channels are perfect to be installed in a 1U/2U server. In addition, the Windows-based utility is easy to operate. The whole disk array can be configured in 10 minutes.

Among the SATA RAID kit, ACS-4800 is an internal SATA tray with lighter material of aluminum. It is unique in appearance, and has anti-shock rail design to reduce the damage caused by removing hard drives. Moreover, its design of stabilizing voltage provides enough power to a hard drive during hot swap. As for the heat sinking, it is achieved by an 8cm fan. That ensures the heat dissipation and stability of a high-speed hard drive with low noise level.

Even a person with a little experience of computer can easily install the SATA RAID kit in minutes. When an array is abnormal, the system will notify you by e-mail. The auto alarm and LEDs on the panel of ACS-4800 that indicate the status of hard drive, fan and temperature are easy to understand. It takes the least time to maintain without interrupting the operation of server.

About ACARD Technology Corp.

ACARD is a dedicated storage IC designer and SCSI/IDE as well as RAID card manufacturer in Taiwan. ACARD’s products are marketed to PC, Macintosh, Unix, and Linux workstation and server users around the world. As ACARD has been engaging in SCSI hardware development and design for years, it knows what the market demands and how to cater to customers’ needs. Since 1999 ACARD has been developing key technologies to grasp the fast growing network storage market, and to focus on managing, protecting critical data on hard drives. ACARD’s products are available through its distributors worldwide.

For more information, please visit our website at www.acard.com or contact the ACARD Technology Corp. at 886 (2) 8512 2290 or, via e-mail:sales@acard.com

PThe World’s Most Advanced 64-Slice Cardiac CT Imaging System Delivers Unmatched Image Quality and Speed for Cardiac Applications

Setting new standards in image quality, acquisition time and diagnostic capabilities for cardiac computed tomography (CT) imaging, Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. (TAMS) today announced the installation of its AquilionTM 64 CFX multislice CT system designed for cardiac applications at the Newport Coast Advanced Imaging in Newport Beach, Calif.

“Toshiba continually strives to raise the standard of care in cardiology, and as a Southern California company, we are pleased that patients in our local community will benefit from the industry’s highest performance 64-slice CT system, the Aquilion 64 CFX,” said Doug Ryan, director, CT Business Unit, Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc.  “With the installation of the Aquilion 64 CFX, the Newport Coast Advanced Imaging will debut as a leading-edge facility in one of the most competitive health care landscapes and deliver to its patients the highest level of diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.”

Located in Orange County, Calif., the Newport Coast Advanced Imaging is a new state-of-the-art multi-modality outpatient imaging center serving the surrounding health care community with latest diagnostic imaging technologies available and dedicated professional staff.

“We are excited to bring the most advanced CT imaging technology in the world to our patients here in Southern California.  With thinner slices, faster speed, and more detailed images, the Toshiba Aquilion 64 CFX scanner gives us the ability to look at structures such as the heart and blood vessels in a way we never could before – all with lower radiation than comparative scanners with fewer slices,” said Kirk Ohanian, M.D., medical director, Newport Coast Advanced Imaging.  “Toshiba’s CT technology takes us one step closer to replacing traditional invasive diagnostic angiograms, in an imaging acquisition time of less than 10 seconds.”

Most Advanced 64-Slice CT System

Built on the same platform as the Aquilion 32 CFX, the Aquilion 64 CFX features the industry’s most advanced multi-detector CT imaging technology available.  Utilizing Toshiba’s unique 64-row Quantum detector, the Aquilion 64 CFX is designed to deliver high-speed, high-resolution cardiovascular imaging with the lowest noise and most anatomical coverage.

The Quantum detector also enables the Aquilion scanner to acquire 64 simultaneous slices of 0.5 mm with each 400-millisecond gantry revolution.  The result is the most precise isotropic imaging of the heart, or any region of the body, during a breath-hold under 10 seconds.

For more information about the Aquilion 64 CFX with the Quantum detector, TAMS and its wide range of medical imaging products, please visit www.medical.toshiba.com.

About Toshiba

With headquarters in Tustin, Calif., Toshiba America Medical Systems markets, sells, distributes and services diagnostic imaging systems, and coordinates clinical diagnostic imaging research for all modalities in the United States.  Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation, an independent group company of Toshiba Corporation, is a global leading provider of diagnostic medical imaging systems and comprehensive medical solutions, such as CT, X-ray, Ultrasound, Nuclear Medicine, MRI and information systems.  Toshiba Corporation is a leader in information and communications systems, electronic components, consumer products, and power systems.  Toshiba has approximately 161,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of $53 billion.

AquilionTM is a trademark of Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation.

Latest Release of Interstage Contentbiz Extends Support for Web Services and SOA, Provides Audit Trail for Compliance, and Improves Efficiencies of Enterprise Content Integration

Fujitsu Software Corporation today announced the availability of Interstage Contentbiz v7, the newest version of Fujitsu’s scalable application platform for enterprise content integration. Interstage Contentbiz v7 extends support for Web services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), offers a new extensible audit trail and enhances integration capabilities. Together, these features allow companies to more effectively access, modify and search structured and unstructured enterprise content resident in disparate, networked systems, independent of format or location. By providing more effective management of corporate intellectual capital assets, Interstage Contentbiz v7 enables businesses to optimize employee productivity, improve customer service and partner relations, comply with government mandates and maximize enterprise value. Key features and enhancements include:

• Bidirectional WebDAV Agent enables integration with any enterprise content management (ECM) system that complies with the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) standard.
• New Extensible Audit Trail ensures that proper audit trail information is maintained for all compliance documentation.
• Enhanced Web Services Interface enables enterprises to leverage a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to create Web services and integrate reusable content integration services with applications.
• New Web Content Agent extends the reach of content integration solutions to intranet and Internet content.
• New Content Portlets, which comply with JSR 168 (Java Specification Request for Portlet API), provide commonly used content navigation and search functionality that can be easily deployed on enterprise portals.

Interstage Contentbiz v7 builds on the application platform’s proven performance in enabling enterprises to leverage their entire knowledge asset base – pooling knowledge through content integration and delivering transparent access to information in real-time. It provides simple, extensible content integration services that adhere to open standards. With Interstage Contentbiz, companies can access structured and unstructured enterprise content from different systems and sources, facilitating unified content views, maintaining content integrity across the company and enabling better content repurposing and reuse.

“Faced by competitive pressures to better optimize customer and supply chain relationships, as well as growing demands for government compliance, companies need to turn their isolated silos of knowledge into unified views and processes,” said Robert Sepanloo, senior vice president of Interstage at Fujitsu Software Corporation. “With Interstage Contentbiz v7, we continue our commitment to helping companies achieve their strategic and financial objectives by providing best-in-class technology for harnessing corporate knowledge and intellectual capital – regardless of location or format.”

Interstage Contentbiz v7 Features and Enhancements

Interstage Contentbiz is a scalable, extensible platform for viewing, searching and modifying content from a range of sources, including data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other enterprise applications, relational databases and a variety of enterprise content management systems. It also repurposes content for many different audiences without the difficulty and cost of duplication. The Java-based, modular architecture leverages open standards, such as WebDAV and Web services, and includes a proven metadata repository, SDK and a set of services and content agents. With v7, Interstage Contentbiz offers significant new features and enhancements to facilitate enterprise content integration, including a WebDAV agent, extensible audit trail, Web services interface, Web content agent and new content portlets.

WebDAV Agent

Interstage Contentbiz v7 offers a new WebDAV integration agent to extend support for the WebDAV standard for editing files and folders remotely over the Internet. The WebDAV Agent makes it possible to search multiple WebDAV-compliant enterprise content management repositories simultaneously and modify content and metadata from each ECM system based on content access policies.. By providing a standards-based approach to integrating content from multiple repositories, the WebDAV agent eliminates the time to develop and maintain custom integrations.

Extensible Audit Trail

A comprehensive content audit trail is a key requirement for any compliance application. The new extensible Interstage Contentbiz audit trail contains a variety of content events, such as content creation, update and delete, and all content life cycle transitions, such as content approval, publishing and archiving with the timestamp information and the name of the user responsible for each state or transition. It also keeps track of system security-related events, such as when users were added or removed, the roles and access that users are assigned, and when each user logs into the system. All audit trail information can be viewed and queried in the Web-based content browser or any custom client application, based on time, audit events or content types.

Web Services Interface

The Interstage Contentbiz Web Services Interface enables enterprises to leverage a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to integrate reusable content integration services, such as full-text search, with applications that need access to both structured and unstructured content sources. The Web Services interface enables Web service client applications to access the Interstage Contentbiz virtual repository to retrieve a content item or a list of content items from multiple sources as if they were all stored in one repository and request for metadata information. With v7, the Web Services Interface adds a new, extensible Web Services Management component for creating and publishing Web services for any new Interstage Contentbiz service that customers may build for their content integration applications.

Web Content Agent

Many large enterprises have numerous dedicated intranet sites for its business units or departments with constantly growing content volumes, but no means to search across all of these independent sites. Interstage Contentbiz v7 introduces a new Web Content Agent, which goes beyond the dedicated search and query tools of other systems, to extend the reach of content integration to intranet and Internet information. The Web Content Agent enables organizations to register all required site URLs in the content integration solution. It then crawls the registered sites and their sub-structures on predefined intervals, making the site content fully searchable in Interstage Contentbiz full-text searches.

Content Portlets

Enterprise portals typically require portlets to handle each of the many content sources on which they rely, from databases and business applications to document repositories. Interstage Contentbiz provides a common content integration layer to help ease the cost and difficulty of integrating various content sources with portals. This allows portal users to navigate to all content sources via a unified navigation tree, which can be exposed as a single portlet. Interstage Contentbiz v7 now features a set of portlets that comply with the Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 Portlet API and provide commonly used content navigation and search functionality.

About Fujitsu Software Corporation

Fujitsu Software Corporation, based in Sunnyvale, California, is part of the Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) family. The wholly owned subsidiary delivers one of the world’s broadest lines of application infrastructure software products, including the Interstage® Suite. Fujitsu Software Corporation leverages Fujitsu’s international scope and expertise in developing and providing information technology solutions, including more than 4,000 software developers worldwide. To learn more about the Interstage Suite, visit www.fujitsu.com/interstage.

# # #

Copyright 2005 Fujitsu Software Corporation. Fujitsu, the Fujitsu Symbol Mark, and Interstage are registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited. All Interstage products and components are trademarks of Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Software Corporation. All other registered trademarks, trade names, or service marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Fujitsu Software Corporation
Lisa Schiltz
408-746-6247
lisas@us.fujitsu.com

Blanc & Otus PR
Lori Riedy
415-856-5140
lriedy@blancandotus.com

Sun Fire x64 Servers With the AMD Opteron Processor Increase Computational Simulations, Reduce Heat Generation by 30 Percent; Solaris 10 Operating System Selected Over Linux

At the NewEnergy Forum 2005, the conference for energy industry leaders, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that NewEnergy Associates, a Siemens Company and provider of end-to-end energy IT and consulting solutions for decision support and energy operations, has selected Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers over all top-tier x64 server offerings, and the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) over standard Linux distributions as part of its high-performance grid infrastructure. The solution, powered by the AMD Opteron[TM] processor, is designed to accelerate applications by increasing computational power, maximize system efficiency and uptime, and provide 30 percent lower heat output than competing alternatives.

With the advent of grid computing and Monte Carlo analysis (data obtained by simulating a statistical model in which all parameters are numerical), NewEnergy’s datacenter has grown rapidly. Due to an increase in the computational power used for these simulations, NewEnergy’s datacenter experienced a dramatic increase in air-conditioning costs caused by the heat created by the large numbers of servers that were not from Sun. Sun’s x64 servers run 30 percent cooler than competing alternatives, making them an ideal choice.

In addition to being a Sun customer, NewEnergy Associates, a Siemens Company provides software, energy business solutions and industry expertise to more than 200 clients throughout the world. The company enables customers to meet the largest challenges in strategic and financial planning, energy market and transmission analysis, energy trading, risk management, as well as retail and wholesale energy market operations.

“After 29 years of business, for the first time NewEnergy is no longer vendor agnostic,” said Neal Tisdale, vice president of software development, NewEnergy Associates. “We owe it to our customers to recommend the virtually unmatched price-performance and reduced heat generation of Sun’s x64 server line powered by the AMD Opteron processor over all other tier-one vendors evaluated. The ability to upgrade to higher throughput dual-core CPU’s without increasing the heat output, and the flexibility to run Solaris OS, Windows or standard Linux distributions, provides a great investment and a dramatic decrease in operational costs.”

In addition, NewEnergy selected Solaris 10, over competing operating systems, for its unparalleled track record, its innovative and comprehensive Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) capability, expansive global support network, and the ability of Solaris 10 to be binary- compatible with other versions.

“As a leading global provider of energy IT solutions expertise, NewEnergy Associates represents a growing category of customers who are demanding more from their IT systems,” said Lisa Sieker, vice president of marketing, Network Systems Group at Sun Microsystems. “With extreme performance, reliability, serviceability and flexibility, Sun’s x64 systems provide NewEnergy with virtually unrivaled return on enterprise IT investment. These stellar benefits, coupled with the powerful and innovative features of Solaris 10, provide a winning combination for NewEnergy Associates, and its need for higher computational grid technology.”

NewEnergy’s investment in Sun technology includes Java technology, Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition, the Solaris 10 OS, and latest Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers. Sun’s technology offerings help NewEnergy establish a thorough grid computing infrastructure, run Oracle databases with large memory requirements, and conduct faster risk analysis, which previously required overnight computations. More information on NewEnergy Associates, a Siemens Company can be found at: http://www.newenergyassoc.com/.

For more information about Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers, please visit: http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/

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 and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Imaging Center Expands Clinical Capabilities and Delivers Faster, More Comfortable Exams

Leading the open magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) market with standard-setting gradient performance, Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. (TAMS) today announced the installation of the Ultra open-MRI system at Boynton Beach Open Imaging Center in Florida.  With its cryogenless superconducting magnet design, unique gradient field technology, and the industry’s best slew rate, Ultra is one of the most powerful whole body open-MRI systems available today.  The system enables clinicians at Boynton Beach Open Imaging Center to perform faster, higher-resolution imaging and offer advanced imaging techniques using an open-MRI design.

“The Ultra MRI system represents the best of patient-comfort designs without sacrificing performance for advanced clinical studies,” said Anita Bowler, MR product manager, Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc.  “With its powerful gradient technology and open design, the Ultra offers clinical capabilities comparable to a high-field MRI system to offer procedures such as True Steady-State Free Precession (SSFP) and Super Fast Advanced Spin Echo (FASE), while accommodating both large and claustrophobic patients.”

“We are impressed with the outstanding performance of the Ultra system.  The system’s gradient technology and slew rate are a quantum leap in open architecture design and image quality.  The greatest benefit of the Ultra is faster imaging time, which translates to improved image quality with less patient motion artifacts,” said Richard Sarner, M.D., medical director and chief medical officer, Florida Open Imaging Centers.  “We’ve also experienced stellar results when performing MRI studies such as post-operative imaging of cervical spinal fusion.  Our clinicians not only are able to visualize the inter-body fusion, but also clearly distinguish each individual screw.  We also are able to accommodate both orthopedic and internal medicine referrals because the Ultra is able to perform advanced applications, such as Steady State Free Precession (SSFP), as well as vascular and MR Cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) abdominal imaging.  MRCP in particular was not possible with past open-MRI configurations, but the Ultra is capable of this application.”

“In addition to imaging patients more quickly, the four-post design of the Ultra is the most patient-friendly open-MRI design available with its large side-to-side and top-to-bottom openings.  This is particularly beneficial for large patients and professional athletes, who we scan on a regular basis at our facility,” added Dr. Sarner.

High-performance System Design
Ultra is the most advanced and powerful whole body open-MRI system available with its unique MRI gradient field technology featuring amplitude of 25 mT/m (milli-Tesla per meter) and the industry’s best slew rate of 100 T/m/s (Tesla per meter per second).  As a result, this slew rate allows the Ultra’s gradient speed to be nearly five times faster than current open systems and 250 percent greater than its high-field counterparts. 

At this performance level, the Ultra offers clinical capabilities that are comparable to those of more costly high-field systems, and allows the application of high-field imaging techniques, such as Single-shot Echo-planar Imaging (EPI) Diffusion, True SSFP, SuperFASE and Black Blood MR Angiography.

For more information about the Ultra, TAMS and its wide range of medical imaging products, please visit www.medical.toshiba.com.

About Toshiba

With headquarters in Tustin, Calif., Toshiba America Medical Systems markets, sells, distributes and services diagnostic imaging systems, and coordinates clinical diagnostic imaging research for all modalities in the United States.  Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation, an independent group company of Toshiba Corporation, is a global leading provider of diagnostic medical imaging systems and comprehensive medical solutions, such as CT, X-ray, Ultrasound, Nuclear Medicine, MRI and information systems.  Toshiba Corporation is a leader in information and communications systems, electronic components, consumer products, and power systems.  Toshiba has approximately 161,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of $53 billion.

New Software Simplifies Management of Data Center Servers and Business Services

During its quarterly Network Computing ’05 (NC05Q2) launch today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) announced two new software releases within its Sun N1(TM) product family: Sun N1 System Manager, an easy to use tool for managing large and small installations of Sun systems, starting with Sun’s x64 servers and broadening out to include more systems in the future and the latest version of Sun N1 Service Provisioning System, which introduces bare-metal operating system (OS) provisioning of: Java(TM) 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE(TM) platform) application servers, Web servers and databases.

“MCI is adopting new technologies that deliver next generation services for our customers,” said Tim Muilenburg, vice president of MCI IT Infrastructure. “The equipment and software behind these technologies must be best in quality so our services meet the expectations of our enterprise and government customers. We expect Sun’s N1 tools to help us achieve our goals by automating application provisioning and increasing our data center efficiency. Also, as we utilize the N1 Service Provisioning System, we will be able to accelerate the delivery of business services from several days to a few hours.”

Sun N1 System Manager offers customers an efficient way of managing large and small numbers of Sun systems. Core capabilities include:

• Discovery – users are able to automatically discover their systems from bare-metal and logically organize systems into user defined groups.
• Provisioning – enables users to remotely install their operating systems onto bare-metal systems or to re-provision existing systems.
• Remote Monitoring – offers administrators detailed hardware monitoring for attributes such as temperature, fan and disk usage, as well as OS monitoring for attributes such as memory, CPU, and file systems.
• Remote Management – provides users with secure lights out management capabilities, such as powering systems on and off with role-based access control that grants access privileges to specific users.

The Sun N1 System Manager also features a hybrid user interface that integrates both the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and Command Line Interface (CLI). With the hybrid interface, operations performed in the GUI are simultaneously reflected in the CLI and vice versa.

“Sun’s N1 software tools are making it easier for organizations to manage the complex systems that deliver their business services,” said Tom Goguen, vice president of product marketing, Operating Platforms at Sun. “With Sun N1 System Manager and Sun N1 Service Provision System, companies can now control the entire stack from bare-metal system through OS to applications and business services.”

The Sun N1 Service Provisioning System simplifies application lifecycle management by rapidly provisioning business services that span multiple tiers – J2EE application servers, Web servers, and databases – across heterogeneous environments. It offers organizations a standard method for deploying business services and tracking changes throughout the deployment process and includes an audit trail to help customers meet regulatory compliance. New features include:

• Application Library – delivers pre-built models for deploying industry leading J2EE application servers, web servers, or database servers from Sun, Oracle, BEA and IBM onto the Solaris OS, including Solaris Containers, and other operating systems, including: Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and AIX.
• Bare-Metal OS Provisioning – allows system administrators to remotely install, configure and rapidly provision operating systems such as the Solaris(TM) OS, Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Through built-in procedures, customers can also rapidly deploy Solaris OS packages and patches, Red Hat Linux package manager files, and Microsoft Windows-based applications, eliminating the need to individually update systems.

Pricing and Availability

Sun N1 System Manager pricing will start at $299 (USD) per managed server and will be available for download on at: www.sun.com/n1, in late summer 2005. The N1 Service Provisioning System pricing starts at $1400 (USD) per managed server and is available now for download at: www.sun.com/n1. Alternatively, customers can purchase N1 Service Provisioning System as part of the Sun Java(TM) Enterprise System.

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

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Java, J2EE, N1, Sun Fire, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

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

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, Java, Sun Fire, iForce, Sun Ray, JXTA and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Commitment to excellence has earned Fujitsu recognition as an outstanding supplier this past year to SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC), one of the world’s leading data, voice and Internet services providers.

“We are proud of our longstanding tradition of going beyond the call for our customers,” said Maureen Merkle, president of SBC Procurement. “We succeed at that because strategic supply chain partners like Fujitsu consistently go beyond the call for us.”

Fujitsu was one of a select group of 47 suppliers recognized for their work in helping the SBC companies deliver outstanding service to its customers during the past year. Fujitsu was recognized for its contributions in the Cost Management & Creative Solutions category.

“As a strategic supplier to SBC for nearly two decades, we are extremely proud to be honored by SBC as one of their top suppliers,” said George Chase, group president and chief operating officer of Fujitsu Network Communications. “As one of only a handful of equipment providers who manufacture the majority of its products in-house, Fujitsu can implement ongoing component, product and process improvements throughout our supply chain to reduce network deployment costs for our customers. The cost management award is an affirmation of our achievements in world-class manufacturing.”

As part of its annual supplier recognition program, SBC took out a half-page ad in the April 22 edition of the Wall Street Journal to publicly thank the selected companies.

About Fujitsu Network Communications Inc.

Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. creates and delivers robust wireline and wireless solutions that power next-generation communications networks in North America. With an unequalled portfolio of IT and telecom products and the support of over 150,000 professionals in more than 100 countries, Fujitsu helps its customers fuse information and networking technology with commercial value.
For more information, please see: http://us.fujitsu.com/telecom

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