Speaking in Shanghai, Sun Microsystems chairman, president and CEO
Scott McNealy announced the new region-wide alliance dedicated to
Java technology. This new alliance follows on the recently
dedicated Java Center of Excellence (JCOE) program in China.
Sun and Reuters are moving to expand their two-decades-old
collaboration to extend support for the Reuters Market Data System
(RMDS) on Intel-based servers from Sun that run the Linux operating
system. Reuters also plans to employ Sun ONE Studio 8 (formerly known as Forte for Java) and the
Solaris 9 Operating System (Solaris OS) to enhance the performance
of RMDS on the UltraSPARC architecture and will continue support for
RMDS on the Solaris OS.
Sun and Manugistics have bested their competition in the UNIX system
line by achieving a rate of more than 30 million stock keeping units
(SKUs) per hour (1.28 billion planning elements per hour) in testing a
retail supply chain replenishment plan running NetWORKS Fulfillment 7.1
on Sun Fire 6800 servers with Sun StorEdge T3 arrays. The
result is almost double the rate recorded in earlier tests by
competitors.
Symantec Corp. and Sun have released an enhanced iForce
Intrusion Detection (IDS) Appliance that combines Symantec ManHunt 3.0
with the Sun Fire V60x server running on a hardened version of the
Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) (x86 Platform Edition). The
system provides flexible deployment options by monitoring up to 2
gigabits per second on copper- or fiber-based networks.
Sun is teaming with Blueprint Initiative North America to launch the
first global Sun Centre of Excellence in Systems Biology at Mount Sinai
Hospital's (MSH) Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto. The
Centre is designed to unite leading scientists in bioinformatics and
proteomics to better understand and study proteins and their
interactions.
Sun plans to supply substantial computing resources throughout Asia to
Algo Lab. The lab, which belongs to the enterprise risk company
Algorithmics Inc., is part of Sun's continued commitment to the global
financial services industry. The lab is able to
provide an off-line and predictable environment for product testing,
knowledge transfer and services support.
Global Finance magazine recently named OCBC Bank as the Best
Corporate/Institutional Internet Bank 2003 in Singapore for the bank's
Sun-powered Velocity@ocbc online banking service. This is the third
consecutive year OCBC has won this award. Velocity@ocbc is designed to
provide customers with a banking system that is multifunctional and
easy to access.
Sun has signed a whole-of-government contract with the
Department of Commerce, New South Wales, Australia, that will enable NSW
agencies to purchase Sun software products over a four-year period.
The information technology and business process outsourcing services
provider, CGI Group Inc., is using Sun's utility computing model in its
new Life Sciences Solution. The solution is being deployed at Genome
Quebec, a genomics and proteomics investment organization. CGI will
utilize the Sun model to obtain network computing resources based on
usage from Sun.
ECS Computers (Asia) Pte Ltd. is offering Trend Micro's Trend InterScan
VirusWall on the Sun Fire V210 server. This Sun and Trend Micro
Anti-Virus security solution package provides scalability, availability
and flexibility for small to large networks. The solution is available
in a 50-user package and a 250-user package.
In a Q&A on the Sun Web site, Curtis Sasaki, vice president of
engineering, Desktop Solutions, Sun, discusses StarOffice software
and interoperability on the desktop. Sasaki looks at the current
productivity suites available today, StarOffice software's
compatibility with Microsoft Office documents and the logistics of
making a software switch.
There are several approaches a DB administrator can take in complying
with the mandate to reduce cost and complexity in the data center.
Adding more hardware and/or software is one approach, but problems are
always a part of that bargain. Outsourcing IT operations results in loss
of enterprise agility, making it difficult to adapt the IT
infrastructure as business conditions change. Fortunately, there is an
alternative: N1, the enterprise data center architecture from Sun.
The new release of StarOffice 7 software (and StarSuite 7
software) provides enterprise-class office productivity while offering
substantial savings to customers. The software adds more
interoperability with third-party applications such as PDF export and
Flash support, improved MS Office compatibility and Accessibility
support.
The Infinite Mailbox for Lotus solution provides real-time data
management of Lotus Notes email databases. The solution reduces the
cost of storage provisioning and management by automatically archiving
older Lotus/Domino email from online storage to alternative/lower cost
devices based on customizable policies.
A Sun article highlights the top eight reasons that StarOffice
software offers a greater return on investment (ROI) than Microsoft
Office 2003. Some of the top reasons include: Lower cost, familiar look
and feel, more innovation, mainstream focus and compatibility.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 (RHEL) with numerous new and useful
features, has just been released. Among these are a Native Posix
Threading Library that will greatly increase the performance of
multi-threaded applications. Second, the new Logical Volume Manager
(LVM) will significantly improve the storage management capabilities of
RHEL. Third, RHEL 3 includes a number of NFS performance and stability
improvements. Finally, RHEL 3.0 is well suited to High Performance
Computing environments.
The Sun Developer Network presents a live chat on the Java DataBase
Connectivity (JDBC) API focusing on RowSet implementations and
version 4.0 of the API. The chat on November 11 will feature guests
Jonathan Bruce and Amit Handa of Sun.
The HPC Consortium is a Sun Global Education and Research worldwide
customer forum which meets to research and discuss high-end scientific
and engineering computing issues and trends. The next HPC meeting is
set for November 15-16, 2003, in Phoenix AZ, in conjunction with the
IEEE SC2003 conference. Scheduled speakers include Shahin Khan, VP of
Sun HPTC; Adrian Cockroft, Chief Architect Sun HPTC; Wolfgang Gentzsch,
Director of Sun Grid Computing and many others.
The UCISA-MISG Annual Conference will focus on the changes in higher
education, the challenges of accommodating a diverse student
population and developing new courses to better meet the needs of
business and industry. The event will be held at De Vere Grand Harbour
Hotel, Southampton from Wednesday 12 to Friday 14 November, 2003.
A new configuration for the Sun Fire V250 server is available that
uses two 1 GB DIMMS. This will replace the existing 2 GB configuration. The
release is designed to allow customers the simplest expansion path to
higher memory capacities. The Sun Fire V250 server is a tower system platform that is ready to deploy out of the box.
A 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC III is now available on the Sun Fire V480
server. Sun is adding the new configuration to provide a faster
processor speed option for the Sun Fire V480 server. The configuration
offers four CPUs and 16 GB of memory and is intended for applications
such as application server, Web server, computer farms, small database,
mail server and directory servers.
The Sun Fire V60x Compute Grid rack system is designed to
facilitate setup and management. The solution includes the latest x86
processor and Cisco's StackWise interconnect technology. With
competitively priced components and fast and reliable deployment built
in, the solution is aimed squarely at most technical markets.
Sun Advanced Lights Out Manager (ALOM) is the standard System
Controller (SC) for remote out-of-band management. ALOM 1.2 supports
the Sun Fire V210 server, Sun Fire V240 server, Sun Fire
V250 server and Sun Fire V440 server, as well as future Volume
Server Products (VSP) servers.
New 73 GB 15K RPM hard disk drives (HDD) are now available for the Sun
StorEdge 9980 and Sun StorEdge 9970 systems. The new products
offer twice the capacity of the 36 GB 15K RPM HDDs and are aimed at
customers that need the combination of storage density with high
performance when it comes to data access speeds.
Sun has achieved a number of customer wins in a variety of industries,
which the company believes is evidence of its momentum in the storage
market. The heterogeneous, competitively priced Sun StorEdge family
of solutions has attracted companies and organizations including Blue
Shield, EPL, Howrey, Lodgian and Trader Publishing.
Mark Canepa, executive vice president for Sun Network Storage,
delivered a keynote speech at the recent Storage Networking World
event, discussing the evolution of data management and Sun N1, Sun's
architecture for tomorrow's data center. The speech focused on how the Network Storage division is supporting the corporate-wide initiative.
A recent article from Eric Knorr at InfoWorld takes a look at how Java
programming language professionals are capitalizing on Jakarta. Senior
Java technology developer Stan Baranek has been utilizing Jakarta in
his work for Genentech Inc., which involves writing mission-critical
software code and constructing Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB)
technology.
In an article on the Sun Web site, Amy Rich writes about "Performing
Centralized Concurrent Backups with Amanda." Amanda is the Advanced
Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver, and is considered a free
enterprise tape backup solution ideal for smaller corporations.
Openwave Systems, a provider of open software and services for the
communications industry, has signed a joint marketing agreement with
Sun. As part of the agreement Openwave will distribute NetBeans
open source development technology and a trial version of Java
Studio with its Openwave Mobile Software Developer Kit.
An IDC report on Sun's Project Rave evaluates Sun's
strategy for encouraging Visual Basic developers to use the Java
programming language. The report covers how the Java language evolved,
what tools Project Rave offers developers, how the market is segmented
and the Project Rave road map. As far as the future outlook for Project
Rave, the IDC report states, "Project Rave from Sun is a Java product
strategy whose time has come."
Software developer Eric Giguere outlines the File Connection optional
package (FCOP) and the personal
information management (PIM) optional package. He explains the
purposes of the optional packages and how to write applications
using them.
Zions First National Bank (Zions Bank) has implemented PowerLender,
Associated Software Consultants' (ASC) Java technology-based loan
origination system (LOS), to process its residential mortgage loans.
The solution will streamline workflow and enhance customization
capabilities.
Sun and Concise Group Ltd. have created a joint
Payments Practice that banks can use to design, develop and deliver
payment infrastructures and innovative payment products, regardless of
clearing and settlement method, market segment, currency and
transaction volumes. The Sun and Concise Payments Practice is targeted at
core payments processing, especially SWIFT, RTGS, Domestic (e.g. BACS)
and Eurozone cross-border payments.
Sun and its partner BCS Information Systems (BCSIS)
have successfully implemented the world's first nation-wide Check
Truncation System (CTS) in Singapore as of July 2003. The CTS, which
runs on Sun servers, replaces physical checks with electronic images on
all four legs of a clearing cycle, expediting the clearing process and
resulting in cost savings for the banks.
An independent report from the Financial Services Technology Consortium
(FSTC) concluded that the Liberty Alliance specifications and OASIS'
SAML provide financial institutions with a standardized way to extend
trusted relationships with customers and employees to third-parties.
Borland Software launched Borland JBuilder X, the latest version of
their cross-platform IDE for Java technology. Enhancements include
advanced Web application development support that includes a
standards-based visual designer for the Apache Struts framework and
first-time comprehensive support for the popular open source
application server JBoss.
News and Solutions for Users of Solaris, Java and Oracle's Sun hardware products
Just the news you need, none of what you don't –
42,000+ Members – 24,000+ Articles Published since 1998
