The speed and power of Sun's top-end server has put it in a class of its own in the enterprise resource planning environment, as evidenced by its recent performance against a stringent SAP benchmark.
"The Starfire has just set a new world record for processing performance, reaffirming its position as the most scalable SAP platform, "says Mike Gomersall, executive channel manager, Sun Microsystems SA.
"The way it delivered against SAP's tough benchmark for its sales and distribution application clearly proves no other platform compares when it comes to getting the most out of a SAP enterprise solution."
Gomersall adds that Sun has been the most scalable platform for the past three successive generations of SAP R/3.
"Other solutions have been designed for the strictly regimented data centre. Ad-hoc queries and tens of thousands of concurrent users all pinging the same database are the sort of things today's networked data centre must be equipped to deal with. This is one of the major strengths of the Starfire," he says.
Commenting on the benchmark, Nicole Anderson, technology alliance manager, SAP Africa says: "The Starfire is already a leader in the UNIX environment and these results confirm its position as a serious contender in the technology space, especially where SAP is concerned."
Aided by the new Sun StorEdge T3 array and running the robust SolarisT 8 Operating Environment, the Starfire server handled over 5,8 million dialog steps per hour. This is the equivalent of 1,9 million fully business processed order line items per hour.
The server - also known as the Sun Enterprise 10 000 server - supported 19,360 SD benchmark users when put to the test using the three-tier SAP R/3 release 4.0 B standard sales and distribution benchmark.
With headroom to spare, the Starfire server clocked an impressive average dialog response time of 1.88 seconds, completing a showing on the SAP platform that outstrips that of IBM's S80 and S/390, and comparable HP solutions.
The Starfire's performance underlines the synergies between Sun and SAP, who teamed up earlier this year to provide a scalable, reliable infrastructure for mySAP.com, SAP's collaborative inter-enterprise Internet solution.
The Starfire servers, StorEdge arrays and Solaris Operating Environment are among the Sun technologies that will be at the core of the online business communities being formed by mySAP.com. Other technologies key to the partnership include Sun's iPlanet e-commerce solutions and the Java platform.
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