At the recent Service & Support Professional Association's (SSPA) Best Practices conference in Santa Clara, Calif., Sun received three SSPA STAR Awards and the SSPA's Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award!

The STAR Awards recognize Sun for exceptional leadership, innovation and commitment in developing and implementing best practices in three areas: Best Practices in Value-Added SupportTM, Best Service Delivery Optimization, and Best On-Site Support (GCS-Americas); the induction into the SSPA Hall of Fame recognizes Sun for winning five awards since the inception of the STAR Awards program in 1990.

To learn more about the SSPA STAR Awards, please visit the SSPA Web site or contact Eleanor Crow (eleanor.crow@bitepr.com): http://www.thesspa.com/press_releases/05_06_08_starawards.asp

 

 

This week, Sun announced the new SunSpectrum Enterprise Services plan, which offers customers one support contract for one low price. While Sun taking the lead in offering forward-thinking support for our technology is NOT new, what is new is the optional multi-vendor support that comes with this plan: Sun becomes the "one throat to choke" for all support issues in the datacenter, working as the middleman for support issues with hardware/software from IBM, HP, Dell, etc.

Here's what you get with the new SunSpectrum Services plan:

Multi-vendor Support Module: Sun will support non-Sun hardware to further simplify contract management and ensure that all hardware issues are resolved quickly and completely;

Solaris OS support for Sun and non x64/x86 systems;

Site-resident Sun engineers or Sun system administrators;

Onsite managed parts inventory;

Environmental assessment service;

Remote monitoring;

Patch service

Check out more at: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-06/sunflash.20070619.2.xml

* *SSPA Honors Sun for *Best On-Site Service* at recent awards ceremony! * *
Service Senior Vice-President Jeya Kumar was on-site to receive the awards for Sun services, 
which was presented to a company whose field installation and repair operation offers a highly 
streamlined and automated process for capturing customer requests, dispatching the right individual 
with all necessary parts, and tracking of the issue through to a successful resolution. 
 
The award recognizes Sun's commitment to delivering the highest levels of service to our customers/partners.
 
 
 

At the Tribeca Film Festival this week, Sun announced StreamStar, a  new IPTV offering. To compliment the product, Sun also offered a range of services to help optimize Sun Streaming System performance and return on investment. When operators purchase Sun Streaming System, they'll receive on-site installation and testing to get them up and running quickly. In addition, factory integration, hardware and software support, training, consulting, and development services are available. Sun experts work hand-in-hand with operators to help ensure a smooth and productive experience.

These Services optimze the StreamStar user experience and include: 

• Enterprise Installation Services
• Hardware Support Pack
• Sun Customer Ready Program (optional): which helps with design validation, integration and testing of Sun and third-party components.
• Software Warranty: Warranty for Sun software products is limited to warranties against defective media.
• Sun Software Subscription: fundamental software services such as telephone and online technical support, software updates and upgrades, and self-help tools and notifications.
• Warranty Support and Next-Day Reponse Times: The Sun Fire X4950 Streaming Switch has a one-year, next business day warranty.
• Hardware Support Pack: includes hardware service coverage, telephone and online technical support, knowledgebase access, and Sun alerts and notifications.

For more information, go to http://www.sun.com/servers/networking/streamingsystem/support.xml

Professional Services Event in Second Life!

Who: John Gage, Director of Science & Co-Founder of Sun, is speaking with 2006 TED Prize Winner Cameron Sinclair, Co-Founder & Executive Director of Architecture for Humanity and Open Architecture Network.

What: Collaborative Architecture in the 3D realm - We will be walking through virtual installations built in 3D of designs that are shared on Architecture for Humanity and Open Architecture Network.

When: Tuesday, April 24th, 10am PDT

Where: TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) Island in Second Life
Location: Second Life SLURL: http://www.clearink.com/ted; To register and for more info, go to www.sun.com/service/secondlife

Give Aways: We are creating virtual installations of designs built by the Open Architecture Network community. We are giving away a 3D versions of this design in Second Life to all registrants.

Ann Waters has been promoted to Vice President of Services Marketing. Her proven leadership skills and results-oriented focus, coupled with her extensive management background, are just a few of the many attributes Ann brings to this critical area.

Ann has been with Sun for seven years and has several years experience in Services Marketing.  Most recently, Ann was the Director of New Product Development within the Services Group.  Previously, she has held the following positions: Director of Global Operations for Services Marketing, Director of Sun Center Operations in the Int'l Americas (SSA), and Director CNS Revenue & Sustain (including time as the acting VP of CNS).  Prior to Sun, Ann worked in IT Consulting with CGI-AMS.  Ann has an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Congratulations, Ann, on this recognition of your passion and dedication to excellence.

As part of today's launch of Java Platform Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6), Sun also announced services designed to enable developers to leverage Sun's Java development expertise to help shorten development cycles and optimize performance and reliability.

Sun Java MultiPlatform (JMP) Support offers end-to-end, mission critical Java technology support for customers with heterogeneous computing environments and helps to optimize application performance and reduce risk. Sun is now offering new three-year subscription pricing for JMP Support to help customers lower costs. More info on JMP Support is available here.

For the Java SE 6 release, Sun is also offering a special promotion for 60 days of unlimited support for Java SE 6 software, free of charge, through Sun Developer Expert Assistance. Tutorials and training courses are also being updated to help developers get the most out of this latest release. Sun Developer Network Program members can get a 10 percent discount on the new Java SE 6 technology training course.

More info on Sun's complete line of developer how-to help, product support and updates, and training and certification programs is available here.

 

Sun Grid Compute Utility has announced a really cool contest to get developers onto Sun Grid: The Cool Apps Developer Challenge. Sun is offering $50,000 in total prizes.

Developers can compete in this contest by building the coolest app for either the Sun Grid Compute Utility or for the Compute Server Plugin for NetBeans software. (U.S. only; offer expires August 31, 2006.)

For details, go to: http://www.sun.com/service/sungrid/SunGridPostcard.pdf

Starting at $120 per year, Solaris Service Plans give users a flexible, cost-efficient choice of three software support levels to match their needs.

    * Low, subscription-based pricing beats the competition, is
      predictable, and helps lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
    * Customers can receive Solaris support from Sun on their choice of
      platforms, including x86, x64 and SPARC®.
    * Scalable levels of service to match customers' requirements for each
      system, with support pricing based on the number of processor sockets.
    * Delivers a growing price advantage for current and future
      generations of multi-core processor systems.

Through July 31, 2006, when a customer purchases a Standard or Premium Solaris Service Plan, they get a 20% discount on 2 to 8 socket plans. See details about this offer http://store.digitalriver.com/servlet/PromoServlet/promoID.178900?cid=174286

After last week's announcements at JavaOne, we heard a lot of interest from developers about Sun's new developer tools and technologies--and they asked if there were service programs available to support the new Java EE 5, NetBeans 5, and Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT) components. Developers using Java EE SDK 5.0, NetBeans 5 or WSIT components can now get support through Sun's new Developer Expert Assistance service program at http://developers.sun.com/services.

In addition, Sun is also offering a special promotion, available through June 30, 2006:

*50% Off a 5-Incident Pack from Sun Developer Expert Assistance* For a limited time, developers can save 50% when they buy a 5-pack of service incidents for Sun Developer Expert Assistance. Through this program, assistance is available for:

    * Diagnostic advice
    * Sanity check on coding approach applications
    * Best practice guidance
    * Pointers to relevant sample
    * Workarounds to current problems

For more information, please go to:
http://developers.sun.com/offers