SUN PUTS SQUEEZE ON WINTEL SERVERS; NEW SERVERS DRIVE CONSOLIDATION FOR REDUCED COMPLEXITY AND TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIPSUN PUTS SQUEEZE ON WINTEL SERVERS; NEW SERVERS DRIVE CONSOLIDATION FOR REDUCED COMPLEXITY AND TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIPTwo-to-Eight-Way Sun Fire Server Brings Sun's Innovative High-End Technologies to Entry-Level Class Systems at Up to 46% Less than Competing Systems
SANTA CLARA, CA -- October 29, 2001 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. today heated up its campaign to reduce complexity and drive down costs in corporate datacenters with a new entry-level server that offers customers a clear choice over the more costly and complex solutions from Wintel server vendors. Sun's new Sun Fire V880 entry-level server features mainframe-like technologies, such as Sun's innovative Sun Fireplane system interconnect, and combined scalability and reliability of the Solaris Operating Environment (OE) and the UltraSPARC III processor at prices below competing Wintel systems. Sun's integrated portfolio of professional and support services will provide Sun Fire V880 server customers with assistance in NT Migration and server consolidation to lower their total cost of ownership (TCO). Designed with TCO in mind, the Sun Fire V880 system starts with the lowest price and takes advantage of the Free Solaris Binary License Program, and is able to pass on the immediate and substantial savings to its users--which is less expensive than Microsoft's Windows 2000 Datacenter software as it does not require client access licenses. The Sun Fire V880 server further reduces TCO by allowing users to consolidate servers and scale within their existing architecture. A single Sun Fire V880 server combines applications typically performed on two or more smaller two-way Wintel servers. Compared with IBM servers, the Sun solution offers simpler consolidation, scaling easily from a one-way to a 106-way server within a common architecture. "With the Sun Fire V880 server, we are focusing our design leadership on the fastest growing segment of the server market �� entry-level servers. Using the same technologies that make our enterprise-level servers the most reliable and scalable in the industry, we've created a new kind of entry-level server that saves our customers money today, and offers them a simple path for future growth," said Neil Knox, vice president and general manager of Sun's Volume Systems Products. "What we're telling customers is bring your Wintel servers in by the boat load, and replace them with a few Sun Fire V880s." Features of the Sun Fire V880 server - including automatic system recovery, hot-swappable PCI cards, online upgrades, concurrent maintenance, cluster support, multi-pathing, system management, remote access and administration (RSC) - create a data center designed for simplicity, high-availability and reliability. As a result, customers save on administration time and costs. The Sun Fire V880--True Design LeadershipThe Sun Fire V880 server's performance is often superior to Wintel servers on many levels. It offers four to 16 times the CPU cache and six times the system bandwidth. The Sun Fire V880 server's higher bandwidth originates with the same technology that powers Sun's high-end data center architecture, the Sun Fireplane interconnect. Made up of more than five miles of wiring, the Sun Fireplane interconnect enables superior real-world application performance and scalability compared to IBM or HP. The Sun Fire V880 system is ideal for customers across a wide range of markets, including financial services, service providers, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, government, health care and education. The server's first customers include Xerox, Cray Supercomputing and Texas Instruments. "Xerox's strategy with the DocuColor iGen3 is to deliver a platform that grows as our customer needs grow. The Sun Fire V880 server accomplishes this through its balanced approach to memory, I/O and processor bandwidth," said Dick Austin, vice president, Production Systems Software Unit, Xerox Corporation. "In addition, the bus architecture that Sun offers has major advantages for our types of applications which are very I/O intensive. With the Sun Fire V880, Xerox offers the best possible scalability--we can add more processors, I/O, disk and memory - - enabling our print engines to perform at a very high standard in a mission critical environment." World Record BenchmarksThe Sun Fire V880 server performance beats the competition hands-down with two world record benchmarks. The Sun Fire V880 system set a world record by demonstrating 37% faster mail server performance using NotesBench Lotus Domino WebMail versus Compaq's Proliant 8500 running Windows NT. In addition, the Sun Fire V880 system delivers world-record performance on the ECperf benchmark which tests the performance and scalablity of Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). The Sun Fire V880 successfully performed server consolidation workloads, including the first three-application consolidation on an 8-way system. Solaris Operating Environment: All the Frills, None of the BillsThe new Sun Fire V880 server, coupled with Solaris 8 OE, represents an ideal systems platform on which to develop and deliver services on demand using Sun's award-winning portfolio of software products integrated into Sun ONE (Sun Open Net Environment) software platform. The Solaris 8 OE, coupled with the new Sun Fire V880 server, enables organizations to rapidly and cost effectively deploy services on demand through Sun ONE -- Sun's vision, architecture, platform and expertise that enables the development and delivery of services on demand. Sun customers have discovered the TCO advantages of replacing their Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers with systems running Solaris 8 OE, consolidating services on highly reliable, secure, and cost-effective Sun servers. Based on open standards, Solaris 8 OE interoperates with a broad range of other platforms including Windows, but does not lock customers in to proprietary functionality that limits choice. Complementing the server's features is the ability for customers to easily scale storage capabilities beyond the drive capacity of the Sun Fire V880 server by adding Sun's most successful storage array, the Sun StorEdge T3. This implementation is ideal for customers who have large applications or are looking to benefit from a network attached storage or storage area network architecture. Professional Services for Fast, Easy TransitionSun's integrated portfolio of professional and support services can help lower total cost of ownership through new NT Migration services designed to easily move customers to Sun's cost effective Solaris platform and consolidation services to help IT managers scale their existing architectures. To help lower total cost of ownership, Sun's migration consulting services from Microsoft Windows NT to Solaris OE and server consolidation services are now available for Sun Fire V880 server customers. These services are designed to help customers consolidate the workload of many small servers into just a few Sun Fire V880 servers to reduce cost and ease management. Consulting services are also available to help Sun Fire V880 server customers maximize performance and availability in complex multi-system installations and to leverage Sun ONE solution architectures. Sun also offers new Sun Fire V880 migration training courses and professional certifications on the Solaris OE, clustering technologies and network security that can help customers achieve faster, more efficient and secure Sun Fire V880 system deployments. To verify efficient and successful Sun Fire V880 system installations, Sun's new Install Check helps verify patches and compatibility of customers existing operating systems, while online proactive support services, through Sun's Online Support Center, and SunSpectrum support help maximize RAS functionality. Key Technical Features of the Sun Fire V880 server include:
Pricing and AvailabilityThe Sun Fire V880 is available and shipping now. The starting list price is $29,995 for a system configured with 2 UltraSPARC III 750MHz processors, 4 GB memory, and 6-36GB hard drives; 4 UltraSPARC III 750MHz processors, 8 GB memory, and 6-36GB hard drives starts at $49,995; and 8 UltraSPARC III 750MHz processors, 32 GB memory, and 12-36GB hard drives is priced at $119,995. 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 power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to take their businesses to the nth. With $18.3 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.
Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Sun Fire, Sun Fireplane, Solaris, SunSpectrum, StorEdge, Java, J2EE and The Network is the Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in 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.PR Contacts for Press and Analysts:
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