Only months after the introduction of Sun Java Enterprise System, Sun Microsystems has announced the purchase of more than 300 000 registered licences around the world of the Solaris 9 Operating System (x86 Platform Edition).
Tertius Bezuidenhout, national systems engineer manager at Sun Microsystems SA, says this volume attests to a surge in customer demand for the Solaris Operating System (OS) on a variety of x86 systems, setting the foundation for continued growth and interest in Sun's Java Enterprise System.
Customers and partners advocating Solaris on x86 systems are from key global industries such as telecommunications, entertainment and finance, which are already taking advantage of the feature-rich Solaris OS x86 platform.
"Value for our customers will continue to increase with Java Enterprise System, which will offer an integrated Web services stack with bundled consulting and support services - all for only $100 per user per year," he says.
Solaris OS, available on Sun x86 and SPARC systems, as well as more than 160 third-party x86 platforms, is at the heart of the Java Enterprise System. Together, Java Enterprise System and the Solaris OS x86 platform allows Sun to provide one of the most affordable, reliable and secure software infrastructures.
"By migrating to the Solaris OS x86 platform, some users have enhanced their system performance more than three-fold. Furthermore, some have not only benefited from the associated cost benefits, but also from increased system reliability and scalability, helping them to respond faster to customer requests and increase overall service levels.
"Other users have taken advantage of the Solaris OS threading library, thereby benefiting from improved performance on Intel-based hardware. Once again, this performance gain allows users to provide customers with a faster, more reliable service," Bezuidenhout says.
Sun's investment in the Solaris OS for x86 platform includes projects that aggressively leverage x86 extended instruction sets and architectures to rapidly drive performance advances.
"Customers are finding real value in the security, performance and stability of Solaris OS x86 platform. And with the Java Enterprise System users can further extend their value by taking advantage of the integrated software components on x86 hardware," he adds.
Bezuidenhout says the recent increase in demand is a clear indication that customers are benefiting from Solaris x86 platform cost savings today.
"Whether it is operating systems, network identity services, portals, communications and collaboration, security, availability or Java Web services, Sun is committed to driving costs down while increasing value to our customers and partners," he says.
Organisations with expertise in the Solaris OS can leverage familiar tools and their Unix experience to bring the Solaris OS to their x86-based hardware. The Solaris OS x86 Platform Edition allows customers to use commodity servers, which saves money.
The Solaris OS x86 Platform Edition also helps companies achieve higher levels of system availability - allowing them to pass these benefits directly to customers. It also improves scalability and performance of applications, providing users with increased efficiencies.
On top of the built-in security of the Solaris OS, Trusted Solaris is the only enterprise-class operating system that provides the highest level of assurance.
"What customers really want is to lower costs - but not at the expense of performance and security. Sun's Solaris OS x86 is an attractive alternative to competing operating systems, and can be up to 13 times less expensive when applied in a typical workgroup or Web infrastructure environment," he concludes.
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Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision - "The Network Is The Computer" - has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.
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