Santa Clara, Calif. -- November 5, 2003 -- The low cost, high performance value leader for Oracle customers, Sun Microsystems announced a world record SPECjAppServer[r]2002 benchmark running Oracle Application Server 10g on a heterogeneous Sun configuration. The world record performance was obtained on a multi-tier operating system and processor architecture, which blended both the Sun Fire(TM) 6800 midframe server -- powered by the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS) with the SPARC[r] processor architecture-- and the Sun Fire V65x server, powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 with the latest x86 chip technology.

This is the first SPECjAppServer 2002 record performance established on a heterogeneous chip architecture, and boasts a 36 percent improvement in price-performance over a competing UNIX[r] vendor's record, established on a homogeneous, Intel-based platform. Today's announcement follows a watershed moment for the Sun-Oracle alliance set May 19 in San Francisco when Scott McNealy, Sun's Chairman, President, and CEO, and Larry Ellison, Oracle's Chairman and CEO, reaffirmed their commitment to attack cost and complexity and extend choice, value and enterprise-level features in the low-cost computing space. Once again, Sun and Oracle have set the bar for choice, performance and price-performance by providing cost-effective, highly reliable solutions customers have come to expect from the 21-year alliance.

The Sun and Oracle record-breaking SPECjAppServer2002 MultipleNode benchmark achieved 2,408.73 TOPS@MultipleNode at 700.07 US$/TOPS@MultipleNode. The benchmark configuration included a seven-node Sun Fire V65x server cluster, each equipped with two Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz processors running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, and linked to the SPARC-based Sun Fire 6800 database server running Oracle Application Server 10g . This world record result represents the highest SPECjAppServer2002 result in any category, besting the nearest competitor in both performance and price performance. Oracle Application Server 10g is a fully compliant, J2EE(TM) technology-based application server, and helps demonstrate the paramount role of Java(TM) technology in this high performance/low cost benchmark.

SPECjAppServer2002, a Java technology-based enterprise application server multi-tier benchmark, is the only industry accepted benchmark to measure performance of J2EE technology-based solutions, and is designed to model a typical Fortune 500 manufacturing business. The SPECjAppServer 2002 benchmark exercises the Java enterprise application server and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and leverages J2EE APIs to connect to a database. SPECjAppServer2002 expresses performance in terms of two metrics. The first metric is TOPS (Total Operations Per Second), which is determined by the number of order transactions plus the number of manufacturing work orders divided by the measurement period in second. The second metric is Price/TOPS -- the price of the System Under Test (including hardware, software, and support) divided by the TOPS.

Published results are highly influential as customers weigh price and performance ��in addition to reputation, reliability and security-- when selecting mission critical solutions to power their business.

On September 8, the companies announced Oracle Database 10g will run on multiple UNIX-based systems from Sun, including Solaris OS on SPARC, Solaris OS on x86, and Red Hat or SUSE Linux on x86. The Oracle Application Server 10g benchmark recorded on Sun's heterogeneous configuration represents realistic workloads typical of most customers' data center usage, and highlights Sun's competitive advantage in performance on a wide range of large-scale enterprise applications. This latest benchmark result continues a 21-year history of successful performance engineering guided by Sun and Oracle's unbreakable commitment to innovation, choice and value. More information on today's announcement can be found at http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2002/results.

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 make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, J2EE, Java, Sun Fire and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. 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. SPEC �� and the benchmark name SPECJAppServer �� are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.