Sun Extends Managed Services Offerings

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (sun.com) announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SevenSpace, a privately-held company based in Ashburn, Va. SevenSpace will broaden Sun's Managed Services offerings to include heterogeneous environments, adding support for Hewlett-Packard's legacy HP-UX and IBM's AIX systems, along with Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Linux.

"It is growing more evident by the day that 'one size fits all' outsourcing is history, replaced by Managed Services that improve service levels at reduced costs while allowing customers to maintain control of their competitive advantage," said Marissa Peterson, executive vice president, Sun Services, Worldwide Operations and Chief Customer Advocate.

SevenSpace technology manages enterprise applications, including SAP, Oracle e-business suites, PeopleSoft and Siebel; databases, including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server; operating systems, including Solaris OS, Windows and Linux platforms; and network devices while allowing customers to maintain ownership of their people and heterogeneous IT assets. Unlike other outsourcing solutions that are largely people and equipment intensive, SevenSpace has a low equipment and people footprint. As a result, SevenSpace solutions may be implemented in a matter of days, not months or years.

SevenSpace employs a flexible, customer-defined solution methodology that enables customers to tailor an outsourced system management solution to their specific business needs and level of control desired.

SevenSpace technologies enable remote system monitoring and management with high levels of operational efficiency and committed service levels.

Pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Sun will acquire SevenSpace in an all cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to close by the third quarter of Sun's 2005 fiscal year, ending March 27, 2005.

Sun is planning on offering SevenSpace capabilities as part of the Sun services portfolio to its traditional markets, while developing new service offerings joining SevenSpace technologies and processes with existing Connected Customer investments to address new market opportunities.

"We are excited about the opportunity to extend the benefits of Sun's Connected Customer vision of reduced cost and complexity and accelerated network service deployments to our customers," said Peter Weber, president and chief executive officer, SevenSpace.