SUN Broadens Solaris X86 Portfolio with New Systems Powered By AMD OPTERON Processors

HostReview.com
Monday, July 26, 2004; 12:00 AM

July 26, 2004 - (HostReview.com) - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (www.sun.com) today significantly expanded its industry-standard, comprehensive product line based on Solaris x86 OS and the AMD Opteron processor, and announced the Sun Fire V20z Server Enterprise Essentials Promotion that can help dramatically reduce customers' total cost of acquisition over three years. With today's announcements, Sun is offering customers leadership and flexibility virtually unmatched by IBM, HP or Dell through industry-standard technologies that lead on price/performance, and Sun's complete spectrum of services and solutions. Sun's AMD Opteron processor-based solutions run the platinum standard for enterprise operating systems (OS) —Solaris, as well as Linux and Microsoft Windows through Windows Hardware Qualification List (WHQL) certification. All of the new products will be showcased at LinuxWorld, San Francisco, in the Sun booth #1247.

"Sun has established clear differentiation in the x86 market by offering Solaris x86 on AMD Opteron processors. This gives them an opportunity to take a strong position in the over $22.5B x86 systems market," said Vernon Turner, group vice president, IDC. "Initial data indicates very strong price/performance relative to other operating systems by taking advantage of the reliability and scalability features of Solaris and AMD's Opteron processor speed".

"Our strong foundation in industry-standard computing architectures and long-standing experience in 64-bit computing provide customers enhanced application system performance and enterprise expertise that mirrors the quality they've come to expect from Sun - at a much lower cost," said John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's Network Systems Group. "With Sun offering unparalleled leadership on operating systems, high-performance hardware and the Sun Java System software, including the Java Enterprise System and the Java Desktop System, I'm confident our newest systems based on the AMD Opteron processor will leave our competitors in the dark."

The immediate availability of the Sun Fire V40z server adds a 4-way server to the existing Sun Fire server line from Sun that previously included the Sun Fire V20z 2-way server, announced at Sun's NC04Q1 event. The Sun Fire V40z server starts at $8,495 U.S. list price and is optimal for industry-standard 32- and 64-bit architectures for high performance computing and enterprise applications, Web services, data management, workgroup collaboration, grid-structured database management and more. As part of Sun's disruptive sales offerings, the Sun Fire V40z server will also be offered beginning today, as part of a limited one week promotion to customers through a special eBay auction. For details visit ebay.com/sun.

The Sun Fire V40z server recently proved to be the best performing 4-processor secure Web server and enterprise applications platform on the market, outperforming a comparable server configured with Xeon MP processors by 76 percent, according to a SPECweb99_SSL benchmark(2). On top of better performance, the Sun Fire V40z is also offered at up to 40 percent lower U.S. list price than the above competitive server.

Extending its leadership in the 64-bit workstation market, Sun is also announcing the availability of the Sun Java Workstation W1100z and Sun Java Workstation W2100z -- based on AMD Opteron processors and leading graphics technology from NVIDIA. Offering better price/performance than any other AMD Opteron processor-based 64-bit workstations on the market, these systems are designed to maximize end-user productivity and start $1,995 U.S. list price and $4,695 U.S. list price, respectively.

The Sun Java Workstation W1100z demonstrated best overall performance running the OCUS (Olaf Corten's Utilities) benchmark V4 for PTC Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0, one of the world's most prominently used mechanical computer aided design applications(5). More information on the Sun Java Workstation W1100z and Sun Java Workstation W2100z can be found at: http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation.

These new workstations are offered with the latest release of the Java Desktop System running on either the Solaris x86 OS or Linux. More information on the Java Desktop System can be found at: http://www.sun.com/javadesktopsystem

In response to customer demand for better control over licensing, planning, and deploying network computing applications such as large databases or grid computing, Sun is introducing the Sun Fire V20z Server Enterprise Essentials Promotion package.

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