Sun Microsystems Federal, Inc., and Tadpole Team to Enhance Mobile Computing Capability of Homeland Security and United States (US) Military Force

Business pact targets improved anytime-anywhere mobile computing capability of US Department of Defense (DoD) agencies.

Carlsbad, Calif.
March 19 , 2002

Tadpole today announced a business pact with Sun Federal aimed at improving the field computing capability and flexibility of US DoD agencies.

Sun Federal plans to deploy Tadpole’s world-class portable UNIX® solutions to US DoD agencies through the Navy’s Tactical Advanced Computer Joint Workstation (TAC-JW) contract. These US-built solutions include Tadpole’s UltraBookIIe(tm) laptop and transportable VoyagerIIi(tm) server, both of which are built around Sun’s UltraSPARC® and Solaris(tm) technologies.

Like all Tadpole hardware, the UltraBookIIe laptop and VoyagerIIi server pack virtually all of the computing power and punch of Sun desktops and servers. Capable of deployment in a short timeframe, the lightweight mobile solutions are particularly suited to battlefield conditions, and are 100 percent binary compatible with Sun desktops and servers.

Tadpole builds mission-critical systems in support of Joint Command and Control Operations for battlefield management, briefings and collaborations, reconaissance and intelligence gathering. Using Tadpole’s portable solutions, greater compute density can be achieved at lower operational cost. Deployed, the lightweight portables can generate productivity gains, and fast returns on investments.

Thomas Kreidler, president Sun Microsystems Federal, Inc., comments: “Tadpole is a legend and its skillset in taking Sun’s technologies and making them truly portable is incredible. In these challenging times, this alliance can lead to deployed forces having more flexibility and improved computing capability.”

Graham Brown, president of Tadpole’s hardware business unit, adds: “Sun Microsystems and Tadpole have collaborated closely over the past decade to give mission-centric advantage to military forces, and improved business competitivity to Global 2000 enterprises. This alliance fully supports our joint goals and drive to extend Sun’s technologies into all agencies of the Federal government.”

Tadpole Value Over the past 10 years, Tadpole has become a trusted supplier-of-choice and collaborator for enterprise software and e-business application vendors, network service providers and forward military command information centers, helping them to maximize the potential and benefits of Sun Microsystems’ computing technologies, anytime-anywhere. The real-world benefits, increased productivity and lower operating costs associated with its product lines are laid out on Tadpole’s website – visit www.tadpole.com.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer[tm]” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to take their businesses to the nth. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

About Tadpole

Tadpole (LSE: TAD) builds and markets specialized Unix platforms and solutions for compute intensive environments. Built in Carlsbad, California, the company’s hardware include laptops and transportable servers, rack mountable compute servers, and enterprise appliances. Tadpole’s platforms are resource manageable, power saving, space saving, generating an early return on investment. Additionally, Tadpole’s products offer expanded PCI slots, extended memory capacities, expanded I/O capabilities and hot swap disk drives all specially configured to meet individual customer requirements. All Tadpole solutions are best-of-breed and 100 percent Sun SPARC binary compatible. The company is one of Sun’s elite Master Value Added Integrators (MVAIs) that design and manufacture specialized system infrastructure solutions for the Sun server market, and a Sun Regional Systems Provider (RSP). For more information, visit www.tadpole.com, or contact Tadpole by email sales@tadpole.com.