Santa Clara Calif. -- October 12, 2005 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), today introduced the SunTone Service Delivery Specification, version 3.0, the newest version of Sun's widely-respected specification and certification program for the delivery and management of highly reliable, scalable, and secure IT services. Sun also announced today that The Hershey Company has utilized and adopted the latest SunTone Service Excellence Model to achieve improved service delivery management and IT governance across its business critical systems. Running on the Solaris Operating System (OS) and a wide range of Sun Fire servers, Hershey has achieved 99.99 percent availability and other demanding performance metrics for its core transactional IT services under the SunTone Service Excellence Model.

Sun Tone is part of Sun's integrated portfolio of aligned services that provide IT infrastructure planning, assessments, and resolution services for customer business issues. SunTone helps enterprises derive greater business value from IT, transforming IT from a support function to a provider of business-led services that create competitive advantage. SunTone Service Excellence Model provides guidance and a measurement system for Sun Tone users. The new SunTone Service Excellence Model 3.0 brings advancements in industry standard and regulatory compliance, major enhancements in security, greater manageability, and requirements for financial management.

"The business of The Hershey Company is making the world's best chocolate and snacks. The business of our IT team is making world-class IT service available in order to keep production running smoothly," said George Davis, chief information officer, The Hershey Company. "This is our third year of certification. SunTone certification has helped assure high availability for our critical SAP ERP system on which Hershey -- as well as dozens of our external vendors, partners and customers -- rely."

"The significant results achieved by Hershey are a testament to the benefits of building business-critical IT services to the SunTone standard -- surpassing SLA benchmarks, cost reductions, as well as attaining IT compliance in an increasingly stringent regulatory environment -- but it's just one of many examples," said Dan Berg, vice president and chief technology officer, Sun Services, at Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Now with the latest release of the SunTone specification, Sun has made IT service delivery even more efficient, simple and complete for our customers."

By adopting the SunTone Service Excellence Model and consistently operating enterprise data center services in accordance with SunTone certification requirements, Hershey was able to improve service availability and operational efficiency. Hershey was also able to reduce the time and effort required to meet requirements for IT governance.

Hershey's experience is representative of a current global market trend to adopt IT service management (ITSM) principles to improve IT governance, compliance, drive operational efficiencies and derive greater business value from IT. The SunTone Service Excellence Model covers all the elements involved in delivering IT services -- system architecture, operational processes, and human skills.

The SunTone Service Excellence Model embodies Sun's unique commitment to community participation and sharing. Developed through a participatory model, the SunTone Service Excellence Model is based on shared industry expertise and best practices. Hershey has been a long-term participant and contributor to the SunTone Council, a Sun-led industry group and elite sub-set of the SunTone community responsible for defining and updating the SunTone Service Delivery Specification.

Sun helps customers deliver IT services based on the SunTone Service Excellence Model in three ways:

• Customers can build their own IT service to the SunTone specification
• Customers can outsource the delivery and management of their IT service to Service Providers offering SunTone certified services, such as AT&T Business in the U.S. and InterXion in Europe. InterXion has achieved SunTone certification for data centers services in 12 European countries and is the leading physical provider of carrier-neutral data center and managed services in Europe.
• Customers can deploy their IT service on the Sun Grid Compute Utility

For more on SunTone, please visit: http://www.sun.com/suntone

About The Hershey Company

The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY) is a leading snack food company and the largest North American manufacturer of quality chocolate and non-chocolate confectionery products. With revenues of over $4 billion and more than 13,000 employees worldwide, The Hershey Company markets such well-known brands as Hershey's, Reese's, Hershey's Kisses, Kit Kat, Almond Joy, Mounds, Jolly Rancher, Twizzlers, Ice Breakers, and Mauna Loa, as well as innovative new products such as Take 5 and Hershey's Cookies. In addition to its traditional confectionery products, Hershey offers a range of products specifically developed to address the nutritional interests of today's health-conscious consumer. These products include sugar-free Hershey's, Reese's and York candies, as well as Hershey's SmartZone bars for people seeking balanced nutrition. It also markets Hershey's cocoa, Hershey's syrup and other branded baking ingredients, toppings and beverages. In addition, Artisan Confections Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Hershey Company, markets premium chocolate offerings, including Scharffen Berger, known for its high-cacao dark chocolate products, and Joseph Schmidt, recognized for its fine, handcrafted chocolate gifts. Visit us at www.hersheynewsroom.com.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, SunTone, Sun Fire, Solaris, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.