Sun Expands to Media and Entertainment Market

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (sun.com) announces today it is reinforcing its commitment to the media and entertainment market with a new vertical group that will create technology solutions to meet Hollywood's insatiable appetite for reliable, fast, and open technology.

Sun is already delivering the Digital Asset Management Reference Architecture, video management and storage products to leaders like Home Box Office (HBO), WGBH and Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM). While at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference (NAB) John Gage, chief researcher at Sun, discussed the latest technologies defining the industry at a radio keynote entitled "Digital Ubiquity and Community: How Universal Access Changes our Lives."

Gage Stresses the Importance of Digital Distribution
Gage spoke about what the industry, as a whole, will gain from the complete transition to a ubiquitous digital market.

He explained how technology is critical to making different types of media more available to a wider audience of users. The convergence of technologies, combined with the choice and control for the consumer, will increasingly place a larger onus on the service provider to track usage and content authorization rights for each user and device on their network.

To oversee this reinvigorated industry focus, Sun has appointed Sun Labs head Glenn Edens to the post of senior vice president of broadband, media and entertainment industry.

Edens has an extensive background as a Sun Labs researcher, entrepreneur, corporate strategist and consultant in telco and computer design. He joins other industry leaders including Sun eight-year veteran Juan Dewar, now appointed new vice president of media and entertainment, bringing a deep understanding of the Java technology handheld market from his former post leading the Java technology mobility group for Sun.

Sun's research and development plans to focus on the transition to digital distribution, the introduction of disk-based archives, and the emergence of new distribution channels such as that offered by telecommunications companies for IPTV, which is a common denominator for systems where television and/or video signals are distributed to subscribers using Internet protocols.

"Sun is dedicated to finding the strongest leaders to drive our vertical market strategy," explains Clark Masters, executive vice president industry solutions for Sun Microsystems. "Our focus on media and entertainment spans from content creation and media management to distribution. Almost all of the major studios today manage their digital assets on Sun, which speaks volumes of the confidence they already have in Sun's expertise. These new appointments will cement our future leadership in this space."

Sun has enjoyed successes with mainstream cable programming channels like Home Box Office (HBO), providing the tapeless archive infrastructure that feeds HBO's 16 premium cable channels today.

The introduction of open standards server technologies combined with dramatically lower prices for hard disk drive storage enable content owners like WGBH, the PBS affiliate that produces a significant amount original programming, to make their archives commercially available and realize new revenue streams from their content through systems powered by Sun.

The next-generation cell phones and PDAs will offer the user an ability to watch video content away from home. This provides more choice and control for the consumer and places more onus on the service provider to track usage and content authorization rights for each user and device on their network, says Dewar.

The media and entertainment industry, which includes broadcasters, moviemakers, cable and satellite companies, publishers, gaming, the music business, and sports spends approximately $25 billion annually on information technology as a competitive weapon.