Try. Blog. Win. Contest

Try. Blog. Win. Contest

Official Rules

No Purchase Required to Enter or Win

1. Overview: The Try. Blog. Win. Contest is open to companies and individuals ("Contestants") who, during their participation in the Try and Buy program, test specified products and showcase their performance results (positive or negative). This Contest is subject to all applicable federal, state, provincial and local laws and regulations. Contest void where prohibited by law, including US export control restrictions.

2. Sponsor: The Contest is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054 and its affiliated companies ("Sun").

3. Eligibility: The Contest is open to Contestants participating in the Try and Buy program. Individual Contestants must be legal residents of the country in which they reside and at least eighteen (18) years of age, or of the legal age of majority in their state, province or country of residence at the time of entry. Persons in any of the following categories are not eligible to participate or win the prize(s) offered: (a) Employees or agents of Sun Microsystems, their parent companies, affiliates and subsidiaries, participating advertising and promotion agencies, and prize suppliers; (b) immediate family members (defined as parents, children, siblings and spouse, regardless of where they reside) and/or those living in the same household as any person in (a) above; and (c) employees of any government entity. Contestants must have access to the Internet and a valid email address in order to enter or win.

4. How to Enter: To enter, (a) test the performance of a specified product obtained through the Try and Buy program; (b) post your performance results publicly; and (c) fill out an entry form and include the url pointer to where your results are posted in accordance with the instructions on the entry form. The Entry must be at least 500 words in length and should meet the Performance Results Criteria outlined below. To ensure timely review, submission of your Performance Results in English is recommended. Illegible, incomplete or inaccurate entries or entries that do not comply with these Official Rules and entries submitted by mail, facsimile or email are void.

5. The Performance Results Criteria:

• All Performance Results must be obtained using the the actual system made available to Contestant through the Try and Buy Program.
• Provide a description of application workload and/or the environment where the product was tested.
• All Performance Results must provide a description of the kinds of tests that were run.
• If competitive configurations are tested, clearly define the difference between the hardware, software and the network environment of various configurations being tested or compared, including Sun's system.
• Verification of tuning guide use may be required by Sun.
• All Performance Results must constitute an independent, original work of Contestant. Contestants must have the rights (via ownership or license) to any and all data, systems, software, hardware, applications, diagrams, log files, etc. that are used in the performance test. By entering this Contest, each Contestant warrants and represents that the Performance Results are original and created by the Contestant and that the Contestant is entitled to publish the Performance Results. Each individual Contestants warrants and represents that the Performance Results were not created during the course of Contestant's employment, using Contestant's employer's equipment, or on Contestant's employers time.

Performance Results must not:

• Contain confidential information of Sun or any other person or entity.
• Be obtained by reverse engineering, decompiling or disassembling any Sun hardware, software, documentation, updates and test suites provided to Contestant by Sun.
• Be obtained in any manner that is unlawful or infringes upon any Sun or third party intellectual property rights.
• Contain any objectionable content, including, but not limited to profanity, potentially insulting or inflammatory images or language or dangerous or illegal activities.

Sun reserves the right to disqualify any entry that does not meet these requirements.

6. Judging: All entries will be judged by a panel of qualified benchmarking, engineering and product marketing representatives at Sun according to the following criteria (the "Judging Criteria"). All decisions and determinations of the panel are final.

• Completeness (20%): Completeness of the results, including the link or links to blogs or Contestant's or third party web pages with provide more detail on the performance testing and which can include diagrams, log files, charts, or other mechanisms that help the Judges determine how the server was setup for testing.
• Applicability (20%): Applicability to the commercial use of the respective product, including, but not limited to the workloads customary to the target markets.
• Creativity (20%): Creativity in the overall approach to the problem, including the deployment of the product and methodology used to demonstrate the performance.
• Performance (20%): Performance improvement over competing systems of the same class.
• Contribution to product evolution (20%): Relevance of the results to the potential future enhancements of the product and/or it's capabilities.
• Spotlight Categories: To be considered for the Grand Prize, the Entry will also have to address and/or relate to the selected "Spotlight Topic" for the Entry Period when it is submitted.

Ties will be broken by a second round of judging based only on the criteria of Performance with the winner being the Contestant whose Performance Result scores the highest in this criteria.

7. Entry Periods: The Contest begins on April 15, 2009 at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time Zone in the United States ("PT") and ends on December 31, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. PT. There are six entry periods during the Contest (each an "Entry Period") as set forth below. Entries received after the end date of any Entry Period, will be entered into the subsequent Entry Period. If Sun does not receive a sufficient number of eligible submissions during an Entry Period, Sun may, in its discretion, combine two Entry Periods and consider all of the submissions as having been received during both Entry Periods.

8. Number of Entries: Contestants may enter the Contest as many times as they like so long as each Performance Result is unique, self-contained and submitted separately. Contestants may not submit the same Performance Results twice during the Contest.

9. Agreement to Official Rules: Participation in the Contest constitutes Contestant's full and unconditional agreement to and acceptance to be bound by these Official Rules and all decisions of the judging panel.

10. Requirements of Winners: The judging panel will choose up to one (1) winner for specified products per Entry Period based on the highest scoring submission. Winners for each Entry Period will be notified by email on or around the 10th day of the following month. If a potential winner fails to respond to the notification within ten (10) business days, or if the potential winner is determined to be ineligible, the Contestant with the next highest scoring Performance Result may be selected as the winner instead.

11. Prizes: 60 Nintendo Wii or a $250 American Express gift card will be awarded during the contest. 20 prizes will be awarded per entry period.

12. Winners: A list of Winners will be announced on the following dates:

• Entry Period 1: July 1st 2009 at 12 a.m. Pacific Time Zone in the United States ("PT")
• Entry Period 2: October 1st 2009 at 12 a.m. Pacific Time Zone in the United States ("PT")
• Entry Period 3: January 7th 2010 at 12 a.m. Pacific Time Zone in the United States ("PT")

13. Publicity: Except where prohibited, participation in the Contest constitutes a Contestant's consent to Sun's use of his/her name, likeness, voice, opinions, country of residence and Performance Results for promotional purposes in any media without further payment or consideration.

14. Rights to Performance Results: By submitting the Performance Results to the Contest, Contestant hereby grants to Sun and anyone authorized by Sun, a world wide, non-exclusive, royalty free license in perpetuity to post, link to, display, reference, use, modify or exhibit the Performance Results for any purpose, without further compensation to Contestant unless prohibited by law. Subject to such license, ownership of the underlying intellectual property of the Performance Results and any related publicity text or information remains the property of the Contestant and/or his/her licensers. Contestant agrees that submission of the online Entry Form shall satisfy any writing requirement which may apply to intellectual property licenses.

15. General Conditions: Contestants are required to adhere to Sun's terms of use and license terms for the products specified and pre-installed software as set forth in the Try. Blog. Win. Contest. In the event of any inconsistency or conflict between the terms of use and these Official Rules, the terms of use shall prevail. All expenses incurred in designing and creating the Performance Results and entering the Contest, including all purchases, designs, test runs, etc. are the sole responsibility of the Contestant. Sun reserves the right to cancel, suspend and/or modify the Contest if any fraud, virus or other technical problem corrupts the administration, security, or proper play of the Contest, as determined by Sun in its sole discretion. In such event, Sun reserves the right to award the prizes according to the Judging Criteria from among the eligible entries received up to the time of the impairment. Sun reserves the right in its sole discretion to disqualify any individual it finds to be tampering with the entry process or the operation of the Contest, or to be acting in violation of these Official Rules, or in an unsportsmanlike or disruptive manner. In the event a potential winner is an individual whose employer has a policy, which prohibits the awarding of a prize to an employee, the prize will be forfeited and an alternate winner will be selected. Any attempt by any person to deliberately undermine the legitimate operation of the Contest may be a violation of criminal and civil law, and, should such an attempt be made, Sun reserves the right to seek damages from any such person to the fullest extent permitted by law. Sun's failure to enforce any term of these Official Rules shall not constitute a waiver of that provision.

16. Entries and Personal Information: All submitted entries are the sole property of Sun and will not be returned. The information collected from entrants is subject to Sun's privacy policy located at http://www.sun.com/privacy. Contestants agree that personal data, especially name and address, may be processed, stored and otherwise used for the purposes and within the context of the contest and any other purposes outlined in these Official Rules. The data may also be used by the Sun in order to check Contestant's identity, their postal address and telephone number, or to otherwise verify their eligibility to participate in the Contest and to receive any prize. Contestants have a right to access, review, rectify or cancel any personal data held by Sun by contacting Performance-Contest@sun.com. If Contestant's data is not provided or is canceled, Contestant's entry will be ineligible.

17. Release: By participating in the Contest, Contestant agrees to release and hold harmless Sun, its officers, directors, employees and agents (the "Released Parties") from and against any claim or cause of action arising out of conducting any performance testing, publishing Performance Results, participation in the Contest or receipt or use of any prize. The Released Parties are released of any liability for any damage, destruction, wreckage, breakage, impairment or potential damage to any materials, software or systems used in connection with the Contest. The Released Parties are not responsible for late, lost, misdirected, altered or damaged entries. Contestant agrees not to instigate, support, maintain or authorize any action, claim or lawsuit against the Released Parties on the grounds that any use of the Performance Results described in these Official Rules infringe any of Contestant's rights as creator of the Performance Results

18. Limitations of Liability: The Released Parties are not responsible for any incorrect or inaccurate information, whether caused by Contestants, printing errors or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the Contest or by any technical or human error which may occur in the processing of submissions in the Contest. The Released Parties are not responsible for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of, entries. The Released Parties are not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer on-line-systems, servers or providers, computer equipment, software or failure of email on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any web site or combination thereof, including injury or damage to Contestant's or to any other person's computer related to or resulting from participating in the Contest.

19. Disputes: Except where prohibited, all issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of the Contestants and Sun in connection with the Contest, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of California, without giving effect to any choice of law or conflict of law rules (whether of the State of California, or any other jurisdiction), which would cause the application of the laws of any jurisdiction other than the State of California. It is the responsibility of individual Contestants to review and understand their employers' policies regarding eligibility to participate in contests. Contestants participating in violation of their employer's policies may be disqualified from entering this Contest or receiving prizes. Sun disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for disputes arising between individual Contestants and their employers related to this Contest

20. Contest Results and Official Rules: A list of Winners and a copy of these Official Rules may be obtained on the Try and Buy Contest site.