The Sun Fire Blade Platform enables users to combine and manage the Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris OE), Linux, SPARC processor and x86 architectures, along with special function blades, in a single chassis. Another new product, the N1 provisioning Server 3.0 Blades Edition, is the platform's management environment, which gives administrators the ability to manage up to 20 times the number of servers and reduce deployment time from days to hours.

The Sun Fire V1280 server is the first and only 12-way system able to run the SPECjAppServer2001 benchmark in the dual-node category, which confirms the product's scalability in application serving workloads.

Using a two-tier configuration of the SAP Standard Application Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark, SAP R/3 Release 4.6C, Sun measured the throughput rate of its Sun Fire 15K system with 104 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC III CPUs and 576 GB of memory. The tested system, in combination with Sun StorEdge T3 arrays and running the Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris OE) and Oracle9i database, achieved 813,000 fully business-processed order line items per hour. The average dialog response time attained in supporting 8000 SAP SD Benchmark users was 1.81 seconds, a 44 percent faster rate than was demonstrated per CPU than the system tested with 900 MHz UltraSPARC III CPUs attained.

Sun and certain members of its iForce Partner Community have formed Network Computing 03 to support the introduction of the new Sun Fire Blade Platform. Products from more than 20 Sun partners figure in the blade platform. These include BEA Systems, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., Opsware, Oracle Corp. and Symantec Corp.

Cingular Wireless is the first of several pilot customers to deploy Sun's N1 technology. Cingular will use N1 in its data center, located in Alpharetta, GA, to increase efficiencies and save money.

To reduce the barriers to implementing new technologies, Sun Microsystems Australia will cut prices across its midrange and high-end Sun Fire servers and will add complementary training.

Sun has announced the end of life (EOL) for the Sun Services Software Only Support (SWON) program, as well as EOL for the Sun Software Support Gold, Silver, Bronze and Subscription Only programs (formerly known as iPlanet Maintenance) as of January 28, 2003. These EOL'd programs will be replaced by the Sun Software Premium Support and the Sun Software Standard Support services.

Kansai Electric Power Company Inc. (KEPCO) is the second largest electrical power supplier in Japan, a country where, it is predicted, 30 million homes will use high-speed Internet access and 10 million families will use super high-speed Internet access by 2005. Given that projected market, Kansai management decided to expand its fiber optic network (and its services) to supply high-speed fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and to add new content delivery services such as broadband Internet access, TV and video on demand, and voice services on its entire installed base using an IT infrastructure provided by Sun and Kasenna.

The tools of Sun Remote Services Net Connect (SRS) help you better manage your Sun server and storage systems. When you download the SRS Net Connect service, you are provided tools that give you knowledge about your system resources. The tools include self-monitoring, trend reporting and the configuration and patch reporting features of Asset Survey.

Sun has made two versions of Solstice Enterprise Agents software available for download. The Solstice Enterprise Agents technology and Developer's Toolkit provides an open, extensible, standards-based solution to facilitate management of both network elements and computer subsystem components.

As of January 2003 Sun is transitioning from its price list the Sun Fire server systems, including system base packages, standard configurations and system redundancy kits, as well as the Sun Fire 3800 and Sun Fire 4800 factory-racked base packages with the UltraSPARC III Cu 900 MHz processor.

The Opsware Blade Edition for the Sun Fire B100s SPARC Blade servers automates operating system and application provisioning on blade servers and automates other critical blade server operations such as power and chassis management. The Opsware Blade Edition speeds many operational tasks by 70-80 percent in comparison to administering these tasks manually.

Sun has expanded its early December 2002 Software License Transfer (SLT) offering for the Sun StorEdge 9900 series from the Americas and EMEA only to APAC as well. Sun StorEdge 9960 array and Sun StorEdge 9910 array customers in the APAC market who wish to migrate their embedded software licenses to the enhanced performance and software features (such as hyper-consolidation) of the Sun StorEdge 9980 and Sun StorEdge 9970 arrays can now do so more easily.

Sun has released to market the Sun StorEdge 3510 Fiber Channel (FC) array and the Sun StorEdge 3310 NAS (Network Attached Storage) products. A common GUI interface enables users of both new products to perform consistent storage management across all arrays in the Sun StorEdge 3000 product line while reducing the time required for the task.

In less than three years, and with the help of the Java in Administration Special Interest Group (JA-SIG), Illinois State University has launched iCampus, an open-standard, campus-wide Java technology-based portal. One of the founding members of JA-SIG, Interactive Business Solutions (IBS), was awarded the contract to develop and implement iCampus.

Sun can help your university successfully implement its national research grant. If you (or your institution) have received a research grant from a government agency or any private foundation or corporate grant, Sun sponsors partnership offerings.

This special offer enables you to get the Oracle9i Database on the Sun Fire V480 server at a discount. The Sun Fire V480 server provides the flexibility required for maximum system growth and expansion potential. The Oracle9i Database provides extensive functionality to support businesses running on the World Wide Web, as well as traditional mission-critical OLTP and Data Warehousing applications.

Sun and Oracle offer the combined experience and expertise of consultants, education and support to help ensure that your implementation works correctly today and keeps running at peak performance tomorrow.

The first evaluation version of Moonlight Session Tracking Manager (STM) from Moonlight Systems is available for download. System administrators can use the software, which runs on Red Hat Linux or the Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris OE), to generate intrusion-detection alerts. In response to suspicious activities, STM can also be used to trigger real-time alarms and commands.

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