Archive | 2005

Companies enter exclusive negotiations to renew managed services agreement; jointly deliver utility computing services

Sun Microsystems and EDS today announced they are in exclusive negotiations on an eight-year services agreement, whereby EDS will transform the operations of Sun’s data centers to the EDS Agile Enterprise Platform, its next-generation global delivery system. Financial details of the proposed transaction were not disclosed.

In addition, the two companies have agreed to jointly deliver IT services, including utility computing services based on Sun’s Solaris 10 OS, to some of the world’s largest enterprise customers.

“Customers are telling me everyday that they are experiencing tangible, bottom-line business benefits from the strong partnership between Sun and EDS,” said Scott McNealy, chairman and chief executive officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “The combination of EDS’ services, plus Sun’s solutions is powerful. We share the same vision for the future – to deliver highly reliable IT solutions to customers more efficiently. Today that strong relationship is advancing forward by leveraging each other’s strengths for our collective customers worldwide. It proves the old adage that two heads are better than one.”

“An extension of the data center contract with Sun further validates the strong partnership between EDS and Sun,” said Michael Jordan, chairman and chief executive officer, EDS. “The combination of Sun’s world-class technology with EDS’ world-class IT services not only benefits our two companies, but also extends this value to our mutual clients. We look forward to elevating that relationship individually and as we work collaboratively with other EDS Agility Alliance partners.”

Sun is a founding member of the EDS Agility Alliance, a federation of market-leading technology companies collaborating to innovate, develop and deliver the EDS Agile Enterprise Platform. Sun is also EDS’ preferred partner for enterprise-wide network computing, outsourcing environments and utility-based computing for the EDS Agile Enterprise Platform. EDS has been providing data center services to Sun since 2000, and the two companies have been strategic partners since 1997.

Sun Influences EDS’ Agile Enterprise Platform

EDS’ Agile Enterprise Platform will provide flexible IT systems that empower enterprises to manage change through agile processes, applications and technology architectures. Sun’s SolarisTM 10 OS provides the operating system base demanded by this technology architecture. Solaris 10 OS also includes features from predictive self-healing to secure grid containers that reduce costs and reduce complexity.

Because Solaris 10 OS runs on Sun’s high-performance servers using the company’s SPARC® processors, or on industry-standard servers based on x86 processors like the AMD Opteron, EDS and Sun will be able to provide services to customers within a wide variety of budgets.

Greater Efficiencies for Sun from Outsourcing

One of the cornerstones of the partnership is EDS’ management of many Sun back-office IT functions. Using the same technology and approach the two companies will offer their mutual customers, EDS will operate Sun’s data centers and data center systems, and provide other technical services related to business systems and Internet operations.

In addition to Sun’s EDS-managed data centers in Europe, Asia and the U.S., the companies will jointly develop and test enterprise offerings in Sun’s iForce partner center in Menlo Park, Calif., and EDS’ Agility Alliance Development Center in Plano, Texas.

“At Sun, we not only talk about the value of delivering IT resources as a service, but we consider it vital to how we run our business,” said Bill Vass, chief information officer, Sun Microsystems Inc. “By moving Sun back-office functions such as IT Help Desk/first tier support to EDS’ front office, Sun can better focus its resources on the innovation that is the core of our company.”

About EDS

EDS provides a broad portfolio of business and technology solutions to help its clients worldwide improve their business performance. EDS’ core portfolio comprises information-technology, applications and business process services, as well as information-technology transformation services. EDS’ A.T. Kearney subsidiary is one of the world’s leading high-value management consultancies. With more than $20 billion in annual revenue, EDS is ranked 87th on the Fortune 500. The company’s stock is traded on the New York (NYSE: EDS) and London stock exchanges. Learn more at eds.com.

The EDS Agility Alliance

A federation of market-leading infrastructure, application, BPO and industry providers collaborating to innovate, develop and deliver the EDS Agile Enterprise Platform – EDS’ next generation global delivery system. Current EDS Agility Alliance partners include Cisco, Dell, EMC, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Siebel, Sun Microsystems and Xerox.

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. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company Ltd.

Momentum Continues with New Services, More Than 400 New ISVs and Expanded Platform Support

During its quarterly Network Computing ’05(NC05Q1) launch today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced that the highly anticipated Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS) is available for customers to download and deploy, free of charge from Sun’s Web site (http://sun.com). Customers will benefit from increased performance as demonstrated through world-record benchmarks, affordable new service and support models and 400 new ISVs supporting Solaris 10. Solaris 10 is a vendor-neutral operating system that is available on more than 340 different hardware platforms from vendors as diverse as Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, IBM and HP.

“There are already 750,000 installations of Solaris 10 through the Software Express for Solaris program. This strong interest underscores the fact that Solaris 10 is delivering tremendous value to customers, partners and developers,” said John Loiacono, executive vice president, Software at Sun. “Coming on the heels of Sun’s OpenSolaris announcement last week, the availability of Solaris 10 is the latest in a series of milestones for Sun.” Extreme Performance With Solaris 10

Sun also announced world record 64-bit results for the Java(TM) platform on Sun’s one-, two- and four-way servers powered by AMD Opteron(TM) processors for the SPEC JBB2000 benchmark (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation Java(TM) Business Benchmark). This achievement highlights Sun’s unmatched performance and success in delivering high performance systems for 64-bit computing. The results were achieved on Sun Fire(TM) V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers using the latest AMD64 implementation of the standard Java Platform (Java 2 Platform (J2SE(TM) 5.0), that was compiled with the new Sun(TM) Studio 10 software. Additionally, the two-way result on the Sun Fire V20z server signifies the advantage of running Java technology-based applications on the industry’s highest performance operating system, Solaris 10, by surpassing previous high marks achieved on the same server with a Linux OS. The SPEC JBB2000 benchmark measures the implementation of Java Virtual Machine (JVM) as well as the performance of the underlying operating system, scalability of processors and memory on Shared Memory Processors (SMPs) platforms. New Services and Support Now Available

The comprehensive set of new services includes flexible subscription-based offerings, migration and education services. Customers and partners can now download Solaris 10 OS free of charge for commercial use. Sun also offers service and support for the Solaris OS that is up to 40 percent less expensive than the leading Linux distribution. Similar to phone calling plans, the subscription-based Solaris Service Plans provide customers and partners with choice and flexibility to receive the level of support they need. Customers can choose Basic, Standard or Premium Solaris Service Plans, each with scalable and predictable pricing, based on the number of processor sockets. To date, more than 7,200 people have registered for the no-cost Web-based Solaris 10 education preview class, and more than 1,400 people have signed up for Early Advantage classroom courses. More information about the Solaris 10 Services portfolio is available at http://sun.com/service/solaris10.

Unprecedented Partner Support

Fueling demand for Sun’s enterprise-class UNIX(R) OS is unprecedented support from Sun’s partner community. Independent hardware vendors, software vendors (ISVs) and OEMs are seeing increased demand and opportunity for Solaris 10. Since November 2004, more than 400 new ISVs, including the leading ISVs from EMEA and APAC, have committed to Solaris 10 through the “Ten Moves Ahead” Partner Initiative which provides technical, marketing and sales benefits to partners developing applications on Solaris 10. Additionally, to help customers and ISVs protect their investment in Solaris, Sun is the only vendor to offer an application guarantee that applies to binaries and source code. With more than 12,000 existing commercial applications today, Solaris has one of the most vibrant ecosystems in the industry. More than 700 business software partners have committed to delivering Solaris 10 applications by the end of this year.

“Strong customer demand has accelerated our support for Solaris 10,” said Sean Duclaux, director, Product Management and Infrastructure Management at BMC Software, Inc. “On the heels of Sun’s release of Solaris 10 to the public, we intend to extend PATROL’s already rich Solaris support to include Solaris 10.”

Sun Studio 10 Now Available for Download

Solaris developers can also take full advantage of the Sun Studio 10 development environment, now available for download from the Sun Web site. Sun Studio 10 makes it simple to get outstanding performance when developing C, C++ and FORTRAN applications for Solaris 10. The product provides a comprehensive environment for developing scalable 32- and 64-bit applications on Sun’s newest UltraSPARC(R), Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processor-based systems. Sun Studio 10 software is fully compatible with previous releases, making it easy for users to upgrade.

To fully demonstrate the capability of Sun Studio 10 and Solaris 10 OS, Sun has submitted the new world record SPECompM2001 result in the two-way category. The SPEC OMPM2001 benchmark is a test of the performance of 11 High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. All C and FORTRAN applications in this suite use the OpenMP programming model and were compiled using the latest Sun Studio 10 development environment, which contributed to as much as a 20 percent boost in performance, when compared with previous Linux-based results published by Sun.

The new score also demonstrated that the Sun Fire V20z server eclipsed the recent IBM eServer OpenPower(TM) 710 server result by 14 percent. Not only did the Sun Fire V20z server outperform the Power5-based server running Linux, it also outperformed the server with half the number of parallel threads.

Sun’s NC05Q1 Web event is available on the World Wide Web at sun.com/nc/05q1. More information on today’s announcements, including full press releases and product details, can be viewed at Sun’s online press kit(http://sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/networkcomputing05q1/).

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 Microsystems, Inc. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, OpenSolaris, Sun Fire, Java, J2SE 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.

SPEC and the benchmark names SPEComp and SPECjbb are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Competitive benchmark results reflect data published as of 02/01/05. For the latest benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/. The 2-way systems have 2 cores. The Sun Fire V20z server (2xAMD Opteron Model 250, Solaris 10): SPECompM2001 – 6033 (2 cores, 2 chips, 2 threads). The Sun Fire V40z server (2xAMD Opteron Model 850, SuSe Linux): SPECompM2001 – 5000 (2 cores, 2 chips, 2 threads). The IBM eServer OpenPower(tm) 710 (1.65 GHz POWER5, Linux): SPECompM2001 – 5282, 2 cores, 1 chip, 4 threads. Result is at: http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/050124/079508.html The Sun Fire V20z server (1xAMD(tm) Opteron Model 250, Solaris 10): 39950 JBB operations per second (JBBops/s). The Sun Fire V20z server (2xAMD Opteron Model 250, Solaris 10): 61314 JBBops/s. The Sun Fire V40z server (4xAMD Opteron Model 850, Solaris 10): 107465 JBBops/s.

New Survey Reveals How Consumer Reliance on Electronic Data and Online Services Is Driving Enterprise Storage

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced the results of a new Harris Interactive(r) survey that sheds light on the relationship between consumers’ growing reliance on their “digital domains” and data center storage trends. Expectations of online savvy adults place heavy demands on data accessibility, security and storage.

According to the survey, 94% of U.S. online adults use digital services, and, of those users, 82% consider the security of their online data to be of great importance, rating security of this information a 9 or a 10 on a 10-point importance scale. The perceived need for security is followed in importance by the ease of accessibility to a consumer’s data, which was considered a 9 or a 10 by 63% of the digital service users polled. The survey also revealed that many respondents expect the data they store through digital services to be accessible forever; this includes photo downloads (30%), online banking records (25%), music downloads (24%) or email (23%). And, while these users have growing needs for and expectations of online storage, 82% of respondents said they would not be willing to pay for additional storage capacity.

“As consumers continue to ‘outsource’ their data storage by using online services to process email, share photos, build MP3 libraries, access financial information, and participate in online auctions, the role of a well-planned enterprise storage strategy becomes all the more crucial to ISPs and other companies that profit from providing these services – especially when these customers are not willing to pay more for the increased storage they will demand,” said Mark Canepa, executive vice president of Sun Network Storage. “Additionally, the fact that consumers place the most importance on data security and access supports Sun’s systems approach to building data centers, which focuses not just on storage, but on how data is accessed, used and moved throughout its lifecycle.”

Digital services are online services that allow consumers to store, manage, access and share their personal data like photos, music or e-mail over the Internet. As consumers continue to store and access more of their personal data through online services, they build what Sun calls their own “digital domain” – a virtual world where they store, access, manage, share, move and enhance their personal data. Companies with the best enterprise storage strategies for their data centers reap the benefits from customers’ growing their digital domains.

Consumer expectations for secure and around-the-clock access to their personal data saved via digital services supports a growing enterprise disk storage industry that grew 3.5 percent year-over-year to $3.4 billion in Q304, according to sales reported for external storage in IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, Q304 release. The growth and success of digital services for email, music, photography, shopping and banking has led to an explosion of electronic data that is created, saved and retrieved daily – all facilitated by scalable, secure enterprise storage solutions.

*Survey Highlights:

• 94% of U.S. adults online use digital services such as online banking, shopping, travel planning, and music and photo downloads.
• On average, about a quarter or more (23%+) of these users expect the electronic data they store via digital services for email, banking history, music and photo downloads to last forever. At least 40 percent expect the same electronic data to exist for more than a year.
• 82% of respondents would not be willing to pay for additional storage capacity for any of the digital services shown in the survey.
• Of the four features listed in the survey, security (82% rate this a “9” or a “10”) and accessibility (63%) are the most important concerns consumers have when they consider the electronic data they save through digital services. Security and accessibility are followed in importance by the longevity of the storage of their data (34%) and the total amount of storage available (31%).

*Methodology:

Harris Interactive® fielded the study from December 2-4, 2004, via its QuickQuery[sm] online omnibus, interviewing a nationwide sample of 2,056 U.S. online adults (aged 18 and over), of whom 1,943 use digital services. Data were weighted to reflect the total U.S. online adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and amount of time spent online. In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The online sample was not a probability sample.

About Harris Interactive

Harris Interactive Inc. (www.harrisinteractive.com), the 15th largest and fastest-growing market research firm in the world, is a Rochester, N.Y.-based global research company that blends premier strategic consulting with innovative and efficient methods of investigation, analysis and application. Known for The Harris Poll® and for pioneering Internet-based research methods, Harris Interactive conducts proprietary and public research to help its clients achieve clear, material and enduring results.

Harris Interactive combines its intellectual capital, databases and technology to advance market leadership through U.S. offices and wholly owned subsidiaries: London-based HI Europe (www.hieurope.com), Paris-based Novatris (www.novatris.com), Tokyo-based Harris Interactive Japan, through newly acquired WirthlinWorldwide (www.wirthlinworldwide.com), a Reston, Virginia-based research and consultancy firm ranked 25th largest in the world, and through an independent global network of affiliate market research companies.

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. 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.

One Quarter After Launch, Hundreds of Customers and Solution Providers Embrace Sun’s New 4- and 8-way Servers based on Chip Multithreading Technology

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that it is seeing healthy market acceptance and support from customers and partners for the Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890 servers – the UltraSPARC(R) IV and Solaris Operating System-based systems launched in September (http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-09/sunflash.20040921.6.html). Harnessing the power of chip-multithreading technology, these are powerful application server and decision support platforms that help customers reduce the cost and complexity of doing business.

Customers and solution providers alike are finding significant benefits from Sun’s breakthrough Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology, as it doubles application throughput in the same physical footprint making upgrading to UltraSPARC IV-based systems very easy. CMT can successfully protect customer investments in both software and skills while maintaining full binary compatibility. Those who reported enthusiastic results following evaluations include Xerox, ESRI, and Sylantro.

“Sun is really turning up the volume and showing the market they remain serious about their SPARC roadmap,” said Vernon Turner, Group Vice President, General Manager, IDC. “The performance enhancements we’re seeing from UltraSPARC III to UltraSPARC IV along with Sun’s commitment to binary compatibility are the leading factors for the current success. The long-term system roadmap that includes radical new chip designs running Solaris 10 has also generated a lot of pent-up excitement and demand.”

Customer Investment

The new Sun Fire V890 server builds on Sun’s leadership in the 8-way market to help deliver the best price/performance. World-record benchmark performance affirms Sun’s standing, with the Lotus Domino R6iNotes benchmark as just one example in which the Sun Fire V890 server demonstrated outstanding processing power by setting a triple world-record in the 8 processor class of systems for best performance, highest number of users per CPU, and best price/performance(1).

The price/performance and throughput advantages of the Sun Fire V890 server, coupled with the system’s reliability and availability and rock-solid Solaris 10 operating system, is what sold Xerox Corporation on the new systems. “Our benchmarks have shown that the Sun Fire V890 Server is up to 1.9 times faster than the current Sun Fire V880 Server with only a slight price premium,” said Rich Lauria, Manager of Xerox’s Production Controller Development Unit. “With this new multi-core technology, we are now able to offer our customers improved scalability and better price/performance options.”

Industry Support for UltraSPARC Multithreading Leadership

Highly dependent on scalability and throughput, ESRI, the world leader in the geographic information system (GIS) software industry, found that their high expectations of Sun’s Sun Fire V890 server scalability were met. According to Ian Sims, ESRI ArcGIS Server Test Team: “We tested with 2 CPUs, then 4, then 8 and went from generating about 4,000 maps to 14,000. Systems management was a breeze; we were consistently able to reconfigure in a lights-out data center from a remote location.”

Sylantro Systems offered similar accolades: “Sylantro’s global telco and CLEC customers demand top-end performance for their mission-critical hosted VoIP service offerings,” said Bernard Gutnick, Vice President of Product Marketing for Sylantro, the leading provider of next generation network application feature servers for the hosted communications marketplace. “The Sun Fire V490 Server enables providers to offer more services on a single platform, thereby reducing system complexity and operational costs, while maintaining the carrier-grade scalability and reliability necessary for these deployments.”

“The extremely positive response that these systems have received from both customers and partners alike reinforces our belief in the importance of Chip Multithreading to achieve exponential performance gains,” said David Yen, executive vice president, Scalable Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. “Sun’s new 4- and 8-way servers round out the UltraSPARC IV system family which now includes entry-level, midrange and high-end options. This is the first step in the Solaris OS for SPARC architecture roadmap to deliver on the promise of throughput computing to meet the needs of demanding network computing applications.”

1.The Sun Fire V890 server configured with 8 UltraSPARC IV processors, running the Solaris OS and Lotus(R)Domino 6.5.1 when configured in four partitions achieved 14,000 users at $13.38 per user, 11890 NotesMark tpm, and 99 ms average response time. The benchmark results stated above reflect results published on http://www.notesbench.org as of 09/13/04.

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, 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. 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.

Dataram First To Double Memory Capacity Of Sun Fire V210 To 16GB

Datarams 4GB Upgrade Not Currently Available From Sun Microsystems

Dataram Corporation [NASDAQ: DRAM], a leading provider of server and workstation memory, today announced that it has successfully completed validation of a 4GB upgrade for Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V210 server. The upgrade, DRS240/4096, doubles the current maximum memory capacity from 8GB to 16GB and is not currently offered from Sun.

“This is another example of Datarams commitment to its Sun customers,” stated Lars Marcher, president of Dataram. “The 4GB memory upgrade delivers the highest memory capacity available in the industry for the Sun Fire V210–a powerful 16GB–and further supports advanced technical users running complex applications.”

The Sun Fire V210 entry-level server is a feature-rich, all-in-one solution system offering high performance, reliability and security in an ultra-dense, 1U rack-optimized package powered by up to two 1 GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processors.

Dataram also offers 1GB and 2GB memory upgrades for the V210 and provides customers with substantial savings of up to 50% when compared to the cost of the manufacturers memory. Dataram is licensed by Sun Microsystems to incorporate Suns patented technology. All Dataram memory products for Sun systems are guaranteed to be 100% compatible and are backed by a lifetime warranty and free technical support.

Product Offerings:

ABOUT DATARAM CORPORATION

Dataram is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of reliable, high capacity and innovative memory solutions. With 37 years of experience, Dataram provides customized memory solutions for OEMs and compatible memory for leading brands including HP, IBM, SGI, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Intel and AMD Opteron. For more information on all Datarams memory offerings, visit www.dataram.com

Dataram Contact:
Susan Ellman
MarCom Manager
609-799-0071
sellman@dataram.com

Investor Contact:
Joe Zappulla
Wall Street Investor Relations Corp.
212-714-2445
JZappulla@WallStreetIR.com