Here are some photos from the official opening of the Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center on Microsoft's Redmond campus. 

Lisa Sieker, marketing vice president for Sun's Systems group, and Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing at Microsoft, cut the ribbon to officially open the Center.

 

 

                                                                 

Keep reading below for an interview with Joe Heel, SVP of Sun's Global Storage Practice, to get his thoughts on the new Center, in addition to the Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Sun recently completed a survey of its ISV community about their use of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) in their solutions. The survey identified the most important features and common partner solutions running on the Solaris 10 OS. Partners from countries including the U.S., China, Germany, Italy and Australia participated in the survey.  Some of the key findings include:

 Partners find performance and availability as the most important considerations when choosing an operating system. These aspects directly impact the strength of their own technology offerings.

- Over 80 percent of respondents named performance, availability and security as the most important capabilities when choosing the Solaris 10 OS

- Over 70 percent of respondents also said that networking, data management, interoperability, platform choice and support & services were important in their choice of the Solaris 10 OS

The most commonly offered partner solutions running on the Solaris 10 OS are products that require high availability and uptime.

- The Solaris 10 OS is most often used for Web-based services, data management, application services delivery and infrastructure/data center management

The vast majority of partners are having a positive experience with the Solaris 10 OS and believe it provides value to their businesses.
- 87 percent of participants said that the Solaris 10 OS is a critical or important part of their business
- 91 percent reported having a positive experience with the Solaris 10 OS
- 88 percent deployed the Solaris 10 OS with little to no difficulty

One example of a Sun ISV who has found success with the Solaris 10 OS is Sapotek, a Web 2.0 company providing a free, online desktop. After switching from Linux, the company experienced a six-fold increase in server performance, 99.99% availability and a 50% reduction in hosting costs. A full case study with more information is available here.

More information on the survey and results are available upon request!

At the annual NRF Conference in New York City this week, Sun and retail tech giant JDA will unveil a joint solution that helps retailers and manufacturers make operations more cost efficient.

JDA is offering the JDA Enterprise Planning Suite running on the power efficient Sun Blade 6000 system – providing a single, integrated box for financial, merchandise, channel and key item planning. This enables users to better manage inventory from one source and conserve data center resources without increasing administration and complexity. Customers can manage a variety of platforms, operating systems and applications on the single solution.
 

The JDA Enterprise Planning Suite consists of Windows and Solaris applications that retailers use to better plan operations across the supply chain so they are in line with business goals. By offering their suite on the Sun Blade 6000 system, JDA helps retailers reduce their hardware footprint, and lower support costs and power usage.

Visit www.sun.com/jda to learn more.

Sun Unveils New Program for ISVs to Enhance Sales Collaboration

This week, Sun unveiled a new program that reaffirms its commitment to strengthening relationships with its vibrant ISV community and increasing opportunities for them to drive more sales.  Sun Sales Connect provides partners with new resources and services for better collaborating and coordinating on sales opportunities with Sun and its extended sales community.  Sales Connect gives ISVs who are members of the Sun Partner Advantage Program (SPA) (http://www.sun.com/partners/overview.html) more avenues for increasing sales pipelines and uncovering joint business with Sun and also channel partners.   

Services offered as part of Sales Connect support and enhance Readiness, Awareness, Collaboration and Engagement activities with our ISV partners and include the following:

* Sales Readiness Service Bureau – streamlines creation of sales materials and message alignment  for  joint Sun/ISV sales solutions

* Field Awareness Service – elevates visibility of ISV solutions  and builds field momentum with the extended Sun sales community

* Sales Exchange events – Sun-sponsored account mapping and pipeline planning events to jumpstart sales collaboration between ISV  partners, channel partners and Sun sales teams

* Sales Concierge – Efficient way for ISVs to connect with Sun sales support

* Industry Engagement Track – Enables Sun and ISVs to jointly build out sales pipelines in specific accounts and industries

The program is now available to SPA members in North America.  It will be rolled out to parts of Europe and Asia in 2008.  Various levels of members are eligible for different services.  SPA members can click here [http://partneradvantage.sun.com/partners/promote/]  to see if they are eligible for the programs.

Check out this video clip for AMD's analyst day, which includes some statements from Sun's Andy Bechtolsheim and John Gage.

Bill Cate, Sun's Senior Director of Global Channel Planning and Programs recently hosted a chalktalk at Sun's San Francisco office with Bill Cook, CEO of Greenplum.  Bill Cate gave a look into the latest and greatest with Sun's Channel program highlighting the recent global SPA (Sun Partner Advantage) Program roll-out completion.  Bill Cook discussed his experiences working with Sun.  For a look into this discussion, click here.

So now you know why Andy is in Dresden this week...

 

He unveiled the Sun Constellation System at the International Supercomputing Conference at 6:00pmCET today. The preview of the system was timed to coincide with the official pre-show tour by journalists, local politicians and dignitaries. We expected the official group to visit the Sun booth for about five minutes but there was so much interest that it was at least half an hour before it moved on. In conversations with the Sun folks, these VIPs seemed particularly excited about what can be achieved using the incredible processing power provided by the Sun Constellation System. To give just two examples: pharmaceutical companies can use it to shorten drug development times, leading to faster discovery of new cures; and car manufacturers can use it to simulate multiple crash scenarios, leading to safer vehicles.

World's Largest Super Computer:  that's what we're shooting for with the new Sun Constellation System, previewed today at the ISC trade show in Dresden.  The system is now being deployed at Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) in Austin, Texas.  We won't know for certain if we'll get the top spot in the super computing Top 500 list until November when the new one is published.  But there is no doubt that we'll be near the top.

The Sun Constellation System is one of the world's first open petascale computing environments.   How fast is that?  Imagine every man, woman, and child on earth doing a simple math calculation every second for 24 hours, non-stop. The new Sun supercomputer will do all that in one second.

It brings together Sun's ultra-dense blade computing, the world's largest InfiniBand switch, high-performance storage, storage, and services.  And we have Andy Bechtolsheim, in large part, to thank for the innovation.   

Sun has really made an effort over the past few years to target the high performance computing.  Why?  Well, it's growing more than 10% a year, much faster than traditional systems infrastructure, so we see it as a great opportunity for continued growth.  In addition, history has shown that high performance computing technology, over time, become the basis for enterprise products. 

Last week during Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, Greenplum and Sun announced the first turnkey data warehouse appliance from tier-1 system vendor to include integrated web analytics capabilities.  More information here, 

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070619005470&newsLang=en

This week at Symantec's Vision 2007 Conference in Las Vegas, Sun announced a new remote office back-up solution designed to deliver around-the-clock data protection in remote office and data center locations.  Available through Sun's Customer Ready Systems (CRS) program, the Sun StorageTek™ Ready Solution for Symantec PureDisk™ Remote Office Back-up Appliance combines Sun Fire™ x4100 servers, Symantec’s NetBackup PureDisk™ Remote Office Edition and Sun StorageTek™ 6140 modular disk arrays.  The appliance offers a more sophisticated and automated level of data protection than traditional methods, removing up to 98 percent of data backup redundancies. This reduces administration costs and increases productivity while securing and optimizing data protection, and improving the reliability of backup and recovery processes. 

For more about this solution and Sun's relationship with Symantec, please visit http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/symantec/.

Sun is introducing the Sun Partner Advantage Rewards Program, a new incentive program for authorized Channel Partners. Participants earn points when they sell eligible products or complete certain activities, and then can redeem those points for fun merchandise, such as electronics, travel or sporting equipment. The program is now available in the United States, Canada and EMEA.

Sun is offering a number of ways to earn points. Eligible products and programs include:

* Try and Buy

* Sun x64 servers and workstations

* Sun Upgrade Advantage Program

The Rewards Program is open to all authorized Channel Partners that enroll via the new My Sun Connection (the new Sun Partner Advantage Program Portal). Partners that enroll before Nov. 15, 2006, will automatically earn points!