Sun's Try and Buy 'Open Performance Contest' Winners Tout Cost Savings and Performance of Sun SystemsCustomers Jump At The Chance To Test Drive Solaris On Sun's Industry Leading Servers; Over 3,000 Free Trials Encourage Sharing Of Uncensored Performance Results SANTA CLARA, Calif. November 28, 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today highlighted the growing success of its innovative Try and Buy Program and winners of its Open Performance Contest. To date there have been over 3,000 systems trialed. In survey results from program participants, 94% of participants would recommend the program to others.
The program's success also sparked the launch of the Sun Open Performance Contest. Launched back in February, to participate, all customers have to do is try out a product from Sun's Try and Buy list, and publicly publish performance result findings. By rewarding the free and uncensored publishing of performance results, Sun is taking the concept of transparency and openness to a new level. Each month all entries from the Open Performance Contest are judged by a panel of Sun engineers, product management and technical marketing and up to one winner per product is selected. The prize is getting to keep the system trialed – free. Sun's Open Performance contest will be extended to run through June 2007. For contest overview please visit: http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy/prm/perf/index.jsp. "As an early trial participant wrote – this is a revolutionary business tactic. Sun has changed the model by allowing customers to try out our systems before they decide to buy Sun," said Christine Beury, distinguished marketing director, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "It has proven to be a great way for us to demonstrate the value of our products outside our installed base. This is key in providing peace of mind for decision makers recommending a switch to the Sun open environment. We urge everyone to come try our products and share their findings with the community - regardless of what you may find - who knows you may even get a free system out of it." Highlights from a few of Sun's Open Performance Contest winners: Results continue to pour in from unbiased third-parties who rave about the too-good-to-be-true performance results found when putting Sun's innovative servers and workstations to the test. "As it is, DigiTar will save between 50-75% of our MySQL operations costs by moving our mission-critical MySQL operations to a pair of [Sun Fire] T2000s. Overall, it will help us eliminate the need for 8 HP DL145 G2s, not to mention drastically simplify our HA environment and increase our possible capacity by a factor of 2." DigiTar WhitePaper, Thomas Rampelberg. "Overall, I'm pleased with the performance of the Sun Ultra 20 M2 ... Another thing worth mentioning is that Solaris (and the Sun Studio compiler) outperformed Windows (and Visual C++) by almost 15%. Solaris outperformed Windows in almost every benchmark category, even outperforming Windows dramatically in some specific tests (such as some of the floating point benchmarks.) If you're working with processor-intensive tasks, Solaris might be the operating system for you." -John Poole, GeekPatrol. "[Sun Fire] T2000 is an excellent machine to build big parallel computing clusters or big data centers. If we look at the SWaP results is clear that an array of [Sun Fire] T2000 machines will give us a powerful supercomputer and we will make big savings in power consumption and space." -Mitch Theys, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago. "Our data center electricity bills cross my desk every month so I'm glad to see Sun pushing hard on this issue. The [Sun Fire] T2000 and T1000 that I tested both met or exceeded what Sun's data sheet says they consume." -Charles Lamb, Sleepycat Software. The contest winners to date are: Nik Clayton with CRF Consulting LTD, Mitch Theys and the University of Illinois at Chicago, Charles Lamb from Sleepycat Software, Jon Emmons with Plymouth State University, Thomas Rampelberg of DigiTar, John Poole from GeekPatrol, Dirk Wetter of Dr. Wetter IT-Consulting, Stefan Rubner, and Colm MacCarthaigh with HEANet. Sun's Try and Buy Program: Announced last December, Sun's free Try and Buy program lets customers test Sun products before deciding to buy. Participation is designed to be extremely easy for prospects, customers and Sun's partners. There are no specific project requirements, no hassles with paperwork or issuing of POs – simply apply online. Originally the program featured only Sun Fire T2000 Servers with CoolThreads technology running on the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). But the wild success of letting Sun's products speak for themselves prompted Sun to introduce additional Sun servers and workstations into the Try and Buy program. Sun plans to continue to expand its product offerings within the Try and Buy program to include a wide variety of Sun server and workstation products. For more information, a list of products included, or to apply for Sun's Try and Buy program go to: http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy. For more information on the innovative thinking behind the Try and Buy Program and DigiTar's conversion experience, listen to Sun's Innovation at Sun podcasts at: http://www.blogs.sun.com/innovation/date/20061128. 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, Sun Ultra, Sun Fire, CoolThreads, Solaris, and the Network is the Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. Press Release Finder
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