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

The services industry has passed manufacturing and agriculture to become the fastest growing and most dominant industry across all of the world's key economies. In the US alone, services now accounts for 75% of the total gross domestic product. Yet studies show that Services is actually the least studied part of our economy.

“Business, academia and government need to focus on service innovation as a priority because growth – in both GDP and revenue and profit – depends on it,” according to Kevin Ellis, Director of Sun's Service Innovation Office.

Ellis and colleague Alok Rishi are among the leaders of Sun's Service Science and Innovation Office. They began the initiative over a year ago after determining businesses and national economies must inevitably depend on services as a growth mechanism.

Tune in to learn how Sun is collaborating in the field of service science and the solutions that will result from this innovation.
When: 1-2 p.m. PDT, Thursday, October 30th

How to Listen to the Live Show:
Visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stations/sunradio/innovationinsider
Dial in number for questions: (646) 478-3261

The show will be available for replay immediately after the taping.

The buzz at EDUCAUSE today was around Sun’s launch of two new social networks: Educonnection.org and OSUM (Open Source University Meetup). Both are designed to build strong communities that empower participants from the global education sector.

Educonnection.org offers an online platform for academia around the globe to exchange information and share best practices. Here is an interview with Joe Hartley, vice president of global government, education and healthcare, on Educonnection.org.

Sun's OSUM is an open social network created for students interested in sharing, using and learning about open source developer tools and platforms.  In the three weeks since its introduction, OSUM has already attracted over 10,000 student members from 50 countries, with more than 500 university clubs created! Here is an interview with Gary Serda on OSUM.

Starting October 28, 2008, Sun is launching a new pricing promotion on free product trials available through its Try and Buy program. Under the promotion, all Sun products available via Try & Buy -- from Sun's CMT and X64 servers to storage products -- are eligible for a free test run for 60 days, risk-free.  Customers can then buy the trial system at a discount of up to 40% off Sun's list price or simply return it at no cost. Don't miss the opportunity to try Sun's recently announced SPARC Enterprise T5440 server, the first CMT server to deliver the scalability and reliability of traditional midrange systems with the breakthrough performance and extreme energy efficiency of the UltraSPARC (R) T2 Plus architecture.


Discounts vary by product and final pricing will be stated in your quote from Sun or a Sun Authorized Partner.  The promotional period runs from October 28, 2008 - May 31, 2009.  Applications must be received by May 31, 2009 to be eligible to buy at the promotional price. More information on the promotion and free product trials are available at: http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy.

An important element of Sun's strategy is our increased focus on emerging markets.  To that end, we're honored and thrilled to announce that Sun was named Enterprise Vendor of the Year at the 4^th Annual ACN Arab Technology Awards, the most prestigious event dedicated to the region’s enterprise & IT industry. Judges review customer testimonials and proof of return on investment to identify the region's best and brightest enterprises and their use of information technology.  This award is wonderful validation of our focus on providing innovative solutions in emerging markets.  

To achieve this award Sun took the innovator’s path, building some of the region’s most ambitious projects including the Middle East’s first grid computing laboratory at UAE University. Sun also enabled firms to adopt new technologies like virtualization all while maintaining our commitment to open standards.

The judges said that Sun’s customer testimonials bore this philosophy out, while also noting that after sales support and service eclipsed expectations as well.

For more information on the ACN Arab Technology Awards and for details of all the winners visit www.itp.net/events/arabtechawards

There have been many inaccurate articles published regarding the status of Sun co-founder, Andy Bechtolsheim. Sun can confirm that Andy will remain with the Company as an essential product architect as part of the Sun Systems group; however he will be working with Sun in a reduced capacity as a result of his being named Chief Development Officer of Arista Networks, a start-up company he founded.

Andy will focus his time with Sun on technology development and ongoing systems projects to help drive new product architectures, including X64 servers and storage servers, and will continue to work on key strategic initiatives such as HPC. Andy has made a career of entrepreneurial ventures, and we look forward to his continued involvement with Sun as his passion for innovation has helped to pioneer some of the world's leading technologies.

"I am very proud of all the accomplishments we have achieved as a systems team, including the Sun Fire X4000 family of X64 servers, the Sun Constellation System, the Sun Fire storage servers and Flash Storage, and Sun Datacenter Switch 3x24, and I look forward to many more over the coming years," said Andy Bechtolsheim, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems.

Yesterday ScaleMP announced that its software is now available on the Sun Blade 6000 modular system, which means that HPC customers running ScaleMP vSMP Foundation Standalone software on the Sun Blade 6000 system can benefit from a leading-edge virtualization solution that aggregates multiple x86 systems into a single virtual shared memory system. As a result, HPC customers will be able to reduce overall system management complexity and improve processing and memory capabilities.

ScaleMP will also be in Sun's booth at SC08 in Austin, so if you plan to be there, make sure you drop by!

It's officially here - the latest version of Java for PCs.  Java SE 6u10 pushes the envelope by adding more new features and functionality than in any previous update release.

The key word here is FAST. 

Not only does that means fast to download (it's only 4.5 MB) but it also means radically improved startup time for Java applications and applets.

Another key feature is the ability to drag Java applets directly from the browser and have them run as desktop widgets. And the widgets will run on your desktop even after you close the browser window. How cool is that?

All the performance enhancements in this release add up to a monumental improvement to the overall consumer experience.

Java SE 6u10 also constitutes an important milestone towards the upcoming release of JavaFX  (later this fall!).

Want to learn more?

Redmonk analyst Coté recently spoke with Danny Coward about Java SE 6u10 and JavaFX for the RIA Weekly podcast series, over on sun.com/news we've got a feature page, which includes another great podcast with Danny Coward (he's been busy!). You'll also want to check out the new Planetarium site, which features news related to Java and JavaFX.

But the best way to experience all the new features in Java SE 6u10 is to go download it & see for yourself!

Sun and the NetBeans community kick off a week-long celebration of 10 years of NetBeans. Since 1998, NetBeans has grown from a student project into an award-winning open source IDE with an active and diverse following of software developers, students, instructors, and partners. In addition to highlighting key milestones and individuals, this week, community members can participate in the NetBeans Decathlon- ten interactive activities around the NetBeans project where users can enter for a chance to win prizes!

A Brief History of NetBeans

Originally called Xelfi as a student project, the goal was to write a Delphi-like Java IDE using Java technology itself. Attracting students and recent graduates in the Czech Republic, a company was formed to take the project from the academic world to the commercial one. The original business plan called for the development of network-enabled JavaBeans components. Jarda Tulach, who designed the IDE's basic architecture, came up with the name NetBeans to describe what they would do. The IDE would provide the best tooling for these components, and thus, the name NetBeans was coined.  Incidentally, when the specification for Enterprise Java Beans came out, it made more sense to work with the standard for such components than to compete with it - but the name stuck.

In the 1999, the effort gained interest from commercial vendors, including Sun Microsystems who eventually purchased the company, renamed the commercial tool to Forte for Java and open sourced the IDE as NetBeans. Turning out to be one of the first of many Sun sponsored open source projects, netbeans.org was launched in 2000.

NetBeans Today

Initially developed as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Java language development 10 years ago, the upcoming release of NetBeans IDE 6.5 incorporates next-generation tooling for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Groovy on Grails, C/C++, and AJAX development as well. Boasting well more than 7 million downloads annually and hundreds of partners, NetBeans is now a large, vibrant, community.

Take a retrospective tour, do the NetBeans Decathlon, and help us look forward to another decade of developer innovation!  For more information, please visit the NetBeans Birthday Site.

Happy Birthday NetBeans!

Sun has just released the new version of Sun Ray Software. You can download it here.

The latest release of Sun Ray Software provides a more seamless PC-like experience through full screen Windows desktop display and improved multimedia performance.

The key new feature in Sun Ray Software 4 10/08 is the enhanced multimedia playback capabilities for Windows (MPEG-4 (H.264) and Windows Media Video 9 (VC-1)), Solaris and Linux.

Other product updates include - Expansion of built-in VPN choices, enhanced security and authentication capabilities, support for 30-inch monitors and in-session desktop resizing (which is great if you're working in multiple locations that have different size monitors). More details on the Think Thin blog.

As IT budgets become increasingly stretched due to the tough economic climate, lowering energy consumption and reducing administration costs are becoming more important than ever. Virtual desktop computing is growing increasingly popular because it helps to conserves company resources and requires less system administration - while offering a secure, cost effective and flexible solution.

Sun Ray Software is a key component of Sun's Virtual Desktop strategy and Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software. Early access for  the next version of Sun VDI Software will be coming soon.

More information on Sun Ray Software 4 10/08 can be found here - including full product features and details on the perpetual license and the new Sun Ray Software subscription offering.

Also visit Chris Kawalek's blog for his perspective on this announcement and for the latest news from Sun's Thin Client & Server Team visit their blog.

Today the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is going live with its new visualization resource, based on state-of-the-art technology from Sun Microsystems, AMD and NVIDIA. The new visualization system, based on Sun Fire X4600 and Sun Fire X4440 servers, will serve as the primary visualization resource for TACC users. Total system capability is 128 processing cores, 1 Terabyte aggregate memory and 32 NVIDIA GPUs.

A critical component of TACC's system is Sun Shared Visualization software and Sun Scalable Visualization software, both of which enable customers to process and analyze huge data sets, and interactively view 3D data using standard applications. To see a demo of the Sun Visualization software in action, check out this short video.

The system's master and visualization nodes will be integrated into the InfiniBand network fabric of the TACC supercomputer Ranger, the world’s most powerful supercomputer for open science research. This tight coupling with Ranger will enable users to visualize terascale data sets generated on Ranger, without having to transfer the data sets to a separate visualization resource for post processing.

If you're interested in hearing more, drop me a line. 

Today Sun is being recognized by the US EPA for surpassing an aggressive greenhouse gas emissions goal. As part of the EPA Climate Leaders program, Sun achieved a reduction of GHG emissions from US operations by 23 percent, surpassing its goal five years early. Sun's flexible work program, Open Work, as well as the use of energy efficient technologies and services are essential to reducing operational GHG emissions for Sun as well as its customers. Sun has pledged an additional 20 percent GHG emissions reduction from worldwide operations over 2007 levels by 2015. To learn more about this achievement and eco innovation at Sun visit http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/2008-1008/

Last week at Oracle OpenWorld, Sun was recognized with Oracle's “Empower the Green Enterprise” award. Our very own Brian Day, senior program manager, Global Lab & Datacenter Design Services was there to accept the award on Sun's behalf.

The award is given to Oracle customers and their respective partners from a wide-range of industries that are using Oracle products to support green business practices and sustainability initiatives in order to reduce environmental impact, costs and improve business efficiencies. Sun partner, Deloitte, nominated us for the award.

We received the award as a result of our continued efforts to:

• Reduce our own CO2 emissions - Reducing 4,100 metric tons from the our CO2 footprint

• Foster an innovative workplace - Sun's OpenWork program prevented an estimated 29,00 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere

• Build eco-innovation into the core of our products - Sun delivers green IT from the desktop to the datacenter with an integrated portfolio of energy-efficient solutions and end-to-end lifecycle services
  

• Build energy efficient datacenters - Saving Sun $1.1 million in energy costs per year

The winning companies were selected by a panel of seven judges, including three sustainability experts: Cody Sisco, manager of Advisory Services at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR); Daniel Esty, green thought leader and co-author of Green to Gold; and Mike Sweeney, executive director of The Nature Conservancy’s California chapter.

Check out www.sun.com/aboutsun/environment to learn more about what Sun's doing to “empower the green enterprise.”

How do you feel about the issues facing the 2008 Presidential election? Do you think you know how your friends on Facebook and MySpace feel or who they plan to vote for? Now you can find out.

Between now and Election Day (Nov 4th, 2008), you and your Facebook and MySpace friends can voice your opinions on the issues around the 2008 US Presidential Election with MyPicks US Election 2008.

After installing MyPicks US Election 2008 on your Facebook or MySpace profile, you can participate in a poll indicating how you will vote in the presidential election & provide your opinion on issues being debated by the candidates.

Then see how well you actually know your friends' views by guessing their view on various issues, and giving them the opportunity to agree, disagree and comment on the issues themselves.

Users can also supply their own comments around individual issues, which are available for others to view and are automatically sent to a Twitter feed so you can follow the "political pulse" of the Facebook & MySpace communities.

MyPicks US Election 2008 was developed in collaboration with Pramati Technologies using zembly, Sun Microsystems' new browser-based social application development environment. Released in private beta in June 2008, zembly is the world's first social programming environment specifically designed for creating and hosting social applications targeting the most popular platforms on the web, including Facebook, MySpace, Meebo, OpenSocial, cloud platforms and more.

To keep up with the latest updates on zembly - subscribe to the blog.

Sun and O'Reilly Media are looking for great presenters for the 2009 MySQL Conference & Expo, scheduled for April 20-23, in Santa Clara, California.

Conference program chair Colin Charles and the program committee invite proposals for conference sessions, panel discussions, and tutorials. More than 2,000 attendees are expected to participate in over 120 sessions at the event.

Proposals can be submitted here. The Cfp deadline runs through midnight October 22, 2008.