Sun has introduced a new client solution eliminating the expense of
traditional desktops while significantly bolstering security and
authentication. The new client desktop includes hardware, the ability
to authenticate access using Java Card technology, a complete, open
desktop software environment as well as a server for identity, portal
and messaging capabilities. This approach breaks entirely new ground in
the client-side solution category and disrupts the high-cost economics
of the traditional enterprise desktop.
Sun revealed N1, its vision of the future data center, at the recent
SunNetwork 2002 Conference and Pavilion. N1 aggregates widely
distributed computing resources (servers, storage, software and
networking) and enables them to operate as a single, powerful entity.
By automating away the complexity associated with managing technology,
business and IT managers will be able to dramatically optimize the
utilization, efficiency and agility of their data centers.
In a keynote speech made at the recent SunNetwork 2002 Conference,
Whitfield Diffie,
Sun's chief security officer, suggested that secure systems are a
critical enabler to the future of business and Net commerce rather than
being an insurance policy. A number of technologies
and solutions were also announced at the conference.
According to IDC, Sun is the fastest growing company in the storage
industry in the second quarter 2002. Sun is the only company to
experience double-digit growth in significant revenue, capacity and
systems shipped categories including all operating systems as well as
UNIX, open systems and SAN revenue. The report also indicates that
Sun was number one in worldwide UNIX revenue and that Sun's storage
revenue grew 30 times faster than the overall storage market in Q2
2002.
Innovative Cryptographic Technologies for Open Source Project
Sun has contributed an Elliptic Curve cryptography code implementation
to the OpenSSL (Secure Socket Layer) project. Elliptic Curve
cryptography is an emerging public-key cryptosystem which provides the
same degree of security as systems used in SSL today with approximately
one-eighth the key size. This makes the technology especially useful
for mobile devices and other small devices that are limited in
power, CPU performance, memory or bandwidth.
Sun and Aidmatrix previewed the first Internet-based Virtual Food Drive
at the SunNetwork Conference in San Francisco, CA. The Virtual Food
Drive is the latest solution available through the new Aidmatrix
Portal, powered by software from Sun and i2 Technologies, a provider of
dynamic value chain management solutions.
Sun has introduced Web-based Enterprise Management Dynamic
Reconfiguration (WDR) on its Sun Fire Midframe and high-end
3800-15K servers. With the help of workload monitoring and measurement
tools developed by BMC Software, Inc., such as PATROL for Sun Automated
Dynamic Reconfiguration, WDR will allow customers to automate the
changing of hardware resources to coincide with shifts in user demand.
The Solaris 9 Operating Environment (Solaris OE) Release 9/02 for the
SPARC platform includes enhancements in the areas of scalability,
availability, manageability and security. This Solaris 9 OE update
integrates fixes and performance improvements, as well as select new
technologies in a tested, easy-to-install configuration while
maintaining guaranteed binary compatibility with prior Solaris
OE releases.
An updated version 1.2.1_001, to the Jini Technology Starter Kit is
now available from the Jini Network Technology Developer Center Web
site. The site provides technical information, downloads and a feedback
mechanism for submitting improvements or bugs for developers using Jini
network technology from Sun Microsystems.
Certification from Sun helps to provide increased career potential and
enable more efficient development projects. Sun offers comprehensive
certification packages at an affordable price, including
Solaris 8 Operating Environment (Solaris OE) System Administration
I Certification Package, Solaris 8 OE System Administration II
Certification Package and Solaris 8 OE TCP/IP Network Administration
Certification Package. There is also an added incentive with a
$50 gift certificate for Sun
clothing and gear.
Version 3.5 release of VERITAS File System Software offers a new
nine-tier licensing structure and numerous enhancements including 32 TB
file system support, group quotas and tunable parameters improvements,
command enhancements and a new GUI.
VERITAS File System is a powerful, quick-recovery, journaling file
system that provides the high performance and easy management required
by mission critical applications.
Sun has released the Sun Interoperability Prototype for Liberty (IPL),
the first open-source implementation of the Liberty Alliance Version
1.0 specification based on Java technology. The goal of the IPL
software is to accelerate network identity application development and
interoperability.
To deploy Web Services and applications with confidence, boost the
performance of secure e-commerce transactions, or process complex
compute-intensive applications, combine the Sun Fire 280R and Sun
Fire V100 servers for cost effective performance and reliability.
System interconnect is a key determiner of the cost, performance and
reliability of large cache-coherent, shared-memory multiprocessors.
Alan Charlesworth's white paper on the
Sun Fireplane interconnect describes its two-level cache-coherency
protocol, and its use in the medium- and large-sized UltraSPARC III
microprocessor-based Sun Fire servers.
There are now new base packages for Sun Fire 3800, 4800 and 6800
servers with UltraSPARC III Cu 900 MHz/8 MB processors (US III Cu
900 MHz). These new base packages are available as "Assemble-To-Order"
configurations from the factory and allow for greater transparency in
end-to-end ordering. They particularly benefit EDI customers, resellers
and Channel Development Partners (CDP). Previous versions of UltraSPARC
III Cu 900 MHz fixed standard configurations and CDP configurations
will continue to remain available.
By migrating to a new 130 nanometer production process available to Sun
through long-time manufacturing source Texas Instruments (TI), the new
UltraSPARC III Cu 1200 processor chip boosts clock frequency by 14
percent to 1.2 GHz and slashes power consumption by 30 percent, from 75
Watts (peak) to 53 Watts (peak). Another main system product news
announcement revolved around Sun Microsystems' new Fifth Generation
Dynamic Reconfiguration Software merges Web-based user interface,
server configuration and active load balancing technologies to bring
grid-style computing concepts to enterprise data centers.
Sun is offering a secure Web server solution that can improve the
performance of Web servers, double SSL transactions and free up CPU
cycles. It can also enable the system to handle more simultaneous
transactions and reduce deployment time and errors.
Sun now offers a new fibre channel (FC) LTO drive option for the Sun
StorEdge L180 and Sun StorEdge L700 tape libraries. This new FC
LTO drive is only supported with a JNI host bus adapter and Brocade
Silkworm Switch. A new feature of LTO FC over LTO SCSI is increased
distance and shared drive capabilities. A new feature of LTO vs. other
technology is transfer rate (15 mb/sec) and capacity (100 GB native).
Sun Support Services provides warranty for Sun StorEdge 9900 Series
array systems and for selected third-party storage area
network (SAN) switch and director interconnect products sold by Sun. This bulletin
provides detailed information on these warranty offerings and on Sun
Support Services SunSpectrum Instant Upgrade offerings for these
products.
Sun has released the Sun StorEdge Network 2 Gb FC Switch-8 supporting
the SAN 4.0 release. The 4.0 release is a combination of
components and configuration rules that makes Sun a leader in large,
complex, heterogeneous SANs.
Continuing its aggressive and ongoing campaign to equip students and
educators worldwide with access to open source technology, Sun has
donated more than $6 billion worth of StarOffice 6.0 -- a Sun
Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) software offering -- to academic
institutions throughout the world. Reaching an unprecedented
240 million students worldwide, Sun's innovative technology solutions
are enabling students to advance in the classroom environment and
prepare for their future careers.
StarOffice software and StarSuite software Media Kits are being
repriced to bring Education Installation kits in line with Enterprise
kits that are being used for replication Master CDs. The reprice of
these media kits supports the education community by offering no-cost
licenses; customers pay only for the physical installation media with
no additional fees to use it across all institutional machines.
Sun is offering a unique opportunity for collaboration to educational
institutions in the United States. Sun is prepared to make a
significant investment in academic and research lab environments that
are used by students. This investment will be in the form of matching
grants of new or upgrades to existing desktop equipment for use in
student academic and research laboratory environments. This matching
grant ends on October 25, 2002. Supplies are limited and grants will be
processed on a first-come, first-served basis. An application process
is provided.
In his 28-page white paper on e-learning, Geoff Collier argues that, as
increasing numbers of businesses incorporate e-learning technology into
their training operations, the distinction between Web-based course
offerings and instructor-led training will disappear. He notes the use
of the term "blended learning," which encompasses all available
learning modes, as pointing in the direction of assimilation.
Sun is offering existing Sun Education customers significant savings
with several new promotions. The "Cash-In on Trade-Ins" and "Sun Bonus
Buys" special promotions and an aggressive promotional price on the Sun
Fire V880 server are geared toward helping schools meet
budgetary challenges.
Troubleshooting tips for the Solaris 8 2/02 Operating Environment
(Solaris OE) on the Sun LX50 server system are available online.
Individual patches, individual ITUs and combined ITU images are also
available online.
The Solaris System Administration for experienced UNIX systems
Administrators course (STS-276) teaches intermediate to advanced system
administration skills using the Solaris Operating Environment
(Solaris OE). The course includes lab exercises that allow students to
install and maintain the Solaris OE, perform storage management, manage
users and perform network management.
Three course bundles are geared toward helping DBAs improve their skills: The
Relational Database Design Bundle, the SQL Fundamentals Bundle and the
Introduction to Database Design Bundle.
Tomcat, the Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet 2.2 and
JavaServer Pages (JSP) 1.1 technology, is one of the open
source projects Sun is involved in. Tomcat is developed in an open and
participatory environment and released under the Apache Software
License. Tomcat is intended to be a collaboration of the best-of-breed
developers from around the world.
Core Java Technologies Tech Tips offers useful information using
core Java technologies and APIs, such as those in Java 2 Platform,
Standard Edition (J2SE). Recent tech tips compared the performance
of ArrayList and LinkedList and offered some suggestions about which of
these classes is the right choice in a given situation. Another tech
tip explored the implementation of using Zero-Length Arrays for a data
filtering method as opposed to returning a null value.
In addition to supporting traditional Java applications, the
Java 2 Platform, Mobile Edition (J2ME) Personal Basis Profile
(PBP) also supports the Xlet application model. Eric Giguere's tech
tip "The Xlet Application Model" teaches you how to use the Xlet
application model.
Eric Giguere demonstrates how to store persistent user preferences in a
MIDlet (mobile applications based on the Mobile Information Device
Profile -- MIDP) as a single record rather than as several individual
records. These preferences can be anything from an email address to
information relating to recent uses of the application, such as which
screen was last displayed. His Tech Tip includes examples of code.
Sun Microsystems Inc. has introduced the new iForce Perimeter
Security solution, an enhanced Internet security solution, designed to
help enterprises and service providers detect, prevent and respond
quickly to today's security threats. The Oklahoma City National
Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and the University
of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are already benefitting from this
security collaboration.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has incorporated the
ScanSoft RealSpeak text-to-speech solution to give citizens access to
government job openings at USAJobs.opm.gov. Through a menu-driven touch-tone
system, as an alternative to Web access, people may select employment
opportunities by different criteria, including industry, region and
title level.
Ipedo, a provider of software products for managing and delivering
dynamic content over the Internet, has released the latest version of
its award-winning Ipedo Dynamic Information Suite, featuring several
important new product enhancements to support the growing use of XML in
content-driven applications. Virtual documents, full-text XQuery-based
searches, smart XML indexing and flexible content organization make
Ipedo Dynamic Information Suite Version 3.2 an unmatched platform for
integrating, organizing and managing change for vast amounts of mixed
content in portals, custom Web applications and Web Services.
Thales e-Security, a supplier of security solutions based on flexible
cryptography, has launched two new versions of its WebSentry hardware
cryptography platform for Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris
OE) and Linux operating systems, in addition to the existing support of
Windows NT and Windows 2000. Application developers using WebSentry are
now able to develop a wider range of high-security applications,
extending the reach of their security implementations.
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