Sun Microsystems' declared business strategy is to provide the technology needed to meet the future demands of network computing.
Stefano Mattiello, regional director of Sun Microsystems for sub-Saharan Africa, says network computing will become increasingly demanding as millions of radio frequency identity chips join the millions of mobile intelligent devices and traditional desktops as being part of information networks.
"To ensure delivery into the future, Sun has three core strategies: to attack cost and complexity, to accelerate network service deployment, and to unleash mobility with security," Matiello told delegates to last week's Sun Forum north of Johannesburg.
"You only get choice through innovation, but very few technology companies are innovating," said Matiello. "In contrast, Sun is spending $1.8 million a year on research and development."
He assured partners and customers that Sun would always develop constructive technology. "Our mission is to ensure choice and value through innovation."
"We are serious about playing in the market," said Sun systems product manager John Foster. He told the Sun Forum that all products released in the past few weeks were aimed at delivering increased performance at lower prices as part of the strategy to change the perception that Sun is an expensive system supplier. "The low cost move is on."
[VIDEO]Foster said Sun has 35 000 employees and is a good source of reference for developers. "Our needs are our clients' needs."
He said one of the ways Sun has found of saving money that it can pass on to its customers is the nearly $3 million it has saved in power alone by implementing 27 000 thin clients.
Lodewyk de Beer, Sun solutions architect, said the Java Enterprise System is pre-integrated and therefore saves all the time and money companies usually have to spend making sure the various components of systems work together. "The bundled, pre-integrated features of the Java Enterprise System address the traditional problems of cost and complexity, which effectively reduces the problem of risk."
De Beer said the Java Enterprise System is a whole new approach to software that is all about integration, which in turn delivers high levels of security, interoperability and availability.
[VIDEO]In addition to the technological advances, De Beer explained that the Java Enterprise System introduced a new business model aimed at further reducing costs by not increasing licensing costs as clients' businesses grow and making maintenance costs predictable by combining maintenance and licensing.
As part of its policy of improving performance without increasing cost, Sun Microsystems is investing in chip multi-threading technology for coming processors to reduce the gap between processing speed and memory capabilities. Foster said Sun's throughput computing was born out of acceptance that the development of computer memory has not kept up with processor speeds. "Throughput computing means building a processor based on chip multi-threading that takes memory latency or the limitations of computer memory into account."
Looking ahead to 2005, Foster said Sun's Niagara processor will be available and is expected to deliver up to 15 times the throughput capacity of current Sun processors.
"Thanks to Sun's expenditure on research and development, Sun is way ahead of its competitors in some technologies," said Foster. "Innovation pays."
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