As we near the end of our Q4 our sales force in going full bore on closing deals to help continue the great momentum we've built up around our middleware this year (see the FY09 growth numbers in the "MySQL / Infrastructure" row of slide 5 of the Q3 financial slides).  But selling software to customers is not where it ends as each customer is buying the software to help solve a business problem and deliver an ROI and business value for their organization.  That is why it is rewarding to see the success stories our terrific reference team publishes on sun.com.

A sampling of some of the recent published stories includes:

•  Medavie Blue Cross - Implemented an SOA built with Sun products and technologies including GlassFish ESB, OpenSSO, and NetBeans in order to simplify application development and integration increasing agility and flexibility.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.
• TravelMuse - Innovative travel and vacation site saved $200K in licensing costs and cut hosting costs by 50% through their use of GlassFish Enterprise Server, MySQL Enterprise, and other Sun software and hardware.  They too generously created a podcast.
• Pretium Telecom - Using GlassFish Enterprise Server and GlassFish ESB, Pretium replaced its existing SOA infrastructure with an open-source model that provides all of the required functionality in a less complex, more flexible framework accelerating development cycles 50% and cutting TCO 50%.
• Equifax - Using the full spectrum of software from Sun under a Java Enterprise System subscription, from GlassFish Enterprise Server to the Portal Server to OpenSSO to Identity Manager, Equifax cut costs, increased revenue, and streamlined audits.
• Bâloise Insurance - Using Identity Manager, Bâloise created an integrated platform for assigning and approving access based on employee business roles gaining transparency into business and IT roles and reducing provisioning time.