The Official Site for Breaking News and the Latest Information from Sun On The Record

Sun and Ashbourne Technology Group are now offering a secure, cost-effective computing solution for educational institutions that can be delivered anytime, anywhere via the Internet -- providing a rich, virtual desktop experience for all leading Operating Systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris to nearly any client device, including Sun Ray thin clients and other platforms with Java(TM)-based browsers.

The Sun Ray device's zero-maintenance and 4-5 watt power draw makes it one of the greenest desktop solutions on the market today. Sun also offers the Sun Ray technology with built-in VPN security so that parents, teachers and administrators can feel secure about the privacy and security of students on the network. The Sun Desktop as a Service solution, part of Sun's education solutions portfolio, is a subscription-based service available for purchase immediately for as little as US $1.00 per day per user.

"This is a full-function solution with no compromises to what students, teachers and administrators are used to today. With this new offering, they can easily and quickly access a common and familiar desktop environment on thin clients via the Internet -- in the classroom, library, at home or virtually anywhere – without the management and maintenance costs and hassles of OS upgrades, security patches, bug fixes or storage backups," said Joe Hartley, vice president of Government, Education and Healthcare Sales, Sun Microsystems.

The Sun Fire X4270 server running SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application (Unicode) with Oracle(R) Database on top of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) delivered the highest two-processor Unicode result on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark. Sun's server, equipped with two Intel Xeon X5570 processors (8 cores, 16 threads) supported 3,800 SAP SD Benchmark users(*).  This result surpasses the 3,752 SD Users score posted by IBM System 550 server, equipped with four POWER6 processors (8 cores, 16 threads), making the Sun Fire X4270 server the fastest eight-core system on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application benchmark.

The SAP Standard Application SD Benchmark is a two-tier ERP business test that represents full business workloads of order processing and invoice processing, while demonstrating the ability to run both the application and database software on a single system. For more detail on this benchmark result visit:http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/sun_x4270_world_record_sap1

(*) Two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark based on SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode) as of 08/21/09: Sun Fire X4270 (2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 3,800 SAP SD Users, 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon x5570, 48 GB memory, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10, Cert# 2009033. IBM System 550 (4 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 3,752 SAP SD Users, 4x 5 GHz Power6, 64 GB memory, DB2 9.5, AIX 6.1, Cert# 2009023.For more details, see http://www.sap.com/benchmark.

Reviews Interactive recently spoke with JavaFX developer Stephen Chin, a prolific developer and blogger within the JavaFX community. Steve is one of the co-authors of the recently released Pro JavaFX Platform book, and was also named a JavaOne 2009 Rock Star for his WidgetFX session. Steve began working in JavaFX in May 2008, after being challenged by Sun's Josh Marinacci to write a program in JavaFX. The challenge turned into the development of WidgetFX, and has kept Steve “heavily involved with JavaFX,” ever since.

In discussing the new JavaFX 1.2 release Steve said “Java FX 1.2 is a huge step forward for the platform!” He stated that the Skinnable Controls, New Layout Classes, and Charting Support are, in his opinion, the most important new features in the release. When asked how JavaFX has changed the way developers create RIAs Steve said: “JavaFX takes the best of client technology with a rich scenegraph, elegant animation support, and built-in media playback, and combines this with web service access, designer skinning and tools, and full browser integration....for the first time, Java client and Web developers can join forces to build applications that are immersive, rather than tiered.”

Read more of Steve's interview and listen to him talk JavaFX with Chhandomay Mandal here in Reviews Interactive.

If you're looking for:

* Information on how Sun products fared against industry-standard benchmarks
* Wide range of performance results from hardware to software including Open Network Systems, Flash, Amber Road, ZFS and more...
* A collection of detailed analysis, tuning tips, performance tidbits and best practices directly from the engineer's perspective

...check out these useful blogs, wikis and websites, created and developed by Sun engineers.

*NEW* BestPerf Blog - Developed by Sun's Strategic Applications Engineers, the BestPerf blog highlights Sun product performance against industry-standard benchmarks, the competition and various other workloads.  The blog includes information on how Sun products performed during testing, the significance of the results, configuration specs, best practices learned and competitive analysis. Check it out at http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/.

System and Application Performance, Monitoring and Tuning Wiki - Created and updated by Sun's Performance Technology Engineers, this wiki deep dives into detailed analyses of Sun's system and software performance including open storage, CMT, networking, MySQL, Oracle, ZFS and Web. It also includes a Dtrace tools section as well as links to other helpful resources/sites.  Take a look at http://wikis.sun.com/display/Performance/Home.

*UPDATED* Sun's Benchmark Website - Sun's main landing page for benchmarking information just had a makeover! Easy to navigate through, check out some new features including benchmark results categorized by systems, storage and software, customer testimonials and links to news articles, press releases and blogs.  For details on over four hundred Sun benchmark results visit http://www.sun.com/benchmarks.

Adding to numerous eco accolades, Sun was honored with the Colorado Technology Association's (CSIA) prestigious APEX CleanTech Innovation Award. This award acknowledges exceptional companies that demonstrate the success, innovation, leadership, and determination that is the core of Colorado’s technology industry. CSIA was impressed with Sun's latest next-generation datacenters like the one in Broomfield, Colorado that maximizes space utilization while minimizing operating costs. They specifically noted Broomfield's estimated  $1 million dollar savings in electricity costs and 11,000 metric tons of CO2 per year.

Here is a link to the award:http://coloradotechnology.org/Events/Apex-Awards.aspx

Slovak Telekom and T-Mobile Slovensko deployed Secure Data Retrieval Server (SDRS), a solution jointly developed by Sun and Coppereye, to enable the secure retention and automatic management of up to 12 months of historic communications data across its fixed and mobile telephony and Internet services.

Here is more information.

Weekly news recap from Chhandomay Mandal and Maijaliisa Burkert is now available.  Listen to the short segment below to get all the highlights.  

 

Sun is exhibiting at the NAB Show in Las Vegas next week. 

Darrell Jordan-Smith, Sun's Vice President for Global Communications and Media, will be on a panel to discuss "media consumption habits and preferences". The panel is sponsored by Deloitte so one of the topics of discussion will be the "2009 Deloitte State of the Media Democracy survey".

Another topic you'll be hearing a lot about is "Advanced Advertising". The Sun media team will be on hand to discuss this new phrase and here is an excellent whitepaper on the topic.

Have fun at the show!

Sun is working with the Connectors Group on a week-long (April 20 - 24) startup forum taking place in New York. This event is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to network with VCs, fellow entrepreneurs and of course with Sun! Our very own Angelo Rajadrai, Senior Technical Evangelist with our Startup Essentials Team, will be presenting on Thursday.

Sun is sponsoring a business plan competition. The winner will receive technology support from Sun including GlassFish, MySQL and engineering services.

More information here.

The Department of Health and Human Services has selected Sun's open source technologies as the backbone of its NHIN-CONNECT initiative.  

The goal of NHIN is to support the secure exchange of interoperable health information within the federal government and with the tribal, state, local and private sectors to enable increased efficiency, better patient care and improved population health.   

NHIN-CONNECT uses Sun's GlassFish™ open source application platform technology, the Java™ Composite Application Platform Suite (CAPS) SOA Platform, and the Sun Java™ Identity Management suite.

Here is the press release.

We have great news!

Sun Microsystems has been selected to provide identity and access management (IAM) solutions for the United States Marine Corps (USMC), including more than 400,000 Marines that use both classified and unclassified networks. This strategic win was in partnership with BearingPoint (see press release here) and includes the following products in the Sun Identity Management Suite:

- Sun Identity Manager
- Sun Role Manager
- Sun OpenSSO Enterprise
- Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition

*The Solaris Operating System (OS) and Sun hardware will also be used for the IAM solution.

The IAM project is part of the Marine Corps Enterprise Information Technology Services (MCEITS) program of record and will serve as the single identity and access management system for all USMC systems and users. Using a federated identity management approach, the IAM solution will create a single identity gateway to business and mission critical systems across the Marine Corps. Integrating with the Department of Defense’s Common Access Card, the solution will use Sun’s Identity portfolio to provide role-based access to a variety of applications to enable data sharing and collaboration in a trusted environment. The system will securely “know” who a user is based on their role, and provide access based on this information.

Sun's open source strategy is paying off as government agencies have realized the benefits of open source -- more transparency, no vendor lock-in, the ability to offer input in product development, ease of use, etc.

For more information on Sun's identity management products, please visit: http://www.sun.com/identity

The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) just announced they have set new records for sustained data transfer among storage systems, using the Sun Fire X4500 and X4540 storage servers.

Sun Fire X4540 storage server

An international team of physicists, computer scientists and network engineers achieved a bidirectional peak throughput of 114 Gbps and a sustained data flow of more than 110 Gbps among clusters of servers at SC08 in Austin, Texas.

Caltech's exhibit at SC08 demonstrated new applications and systems for globally distributed data analysis for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, which is expected to resume operations in the spring. As I blogged about in September, CERN is also utilizing Sun Storage to handle the massive amounts of data that will be generated by the LHC.

Sun's SPARC Enterprise M9000 servers delivered the best ever results on benchmarks testing LHS' BSCS iX Release 2 telco billing and charging solution, according to a release issued today.

LHS, a leading provider of telecom billing and customer care systems across the wireless, wireline, and IP telecom markets worldwide, reported the SPARC Enterprise M9000 server with Solaris generated "an unprecedented" 1.89 million bills per hour and supported over 15 million calls per hour with average latency of 13.3 ms, demonstrating the massive scalability and performance of the box.

The SPARC Enterprise M9000 configuration also showed 99% of transactions had a latency of less than 41 ms under full load -- the best value ever measured and significantly better than previous benchmarks, according to the release.

More information on the LHS benchmark is available here.

Sun Microsystems and Europractice today announced a three-year collaboration to promote OpenSPARC(TM) technology--one of the only open sourced multi-core, multithreaded processor architectures--as a reference design among 650 universities and research institutions across 38 countries in the European region. Here is the press release.

Kudos to Steve Gillmor for suggesting the site, Sun.com/ponytail in his recent video.  We've now activated the site.

Since Steve is so concerned about Sun's open source activities we've aimed this url site at the site that gives an overview of all Sun's open source efforts.

That said, we do appreciate the traffic and as always continue to be dazzled by Steve's rapier wit.