Startup Essentials

Now Serving -- China and India

Launched today in P. R. China and India are the Startup Essentials program. Now, startups (in general, less than 4 years old and fewer than 150 employees) in these countries can get great pricing on systems, free email support, discounted hosting, and more. For China, go to cn.sun.com/startups. For India, go to in.sun.com/startups.
Did you see the Niagara 2 announcement? Great stuff!

Posted at 09:55PM Aug 07, 2007 by sunstartupessentials in Personal  |  Comments[0]

Get ready for a busy week

My apologies that I've been off the blog for awhile. But this week (starting 8.6.07) is a big one, and we've been getting ready for it. I can't tell you everything today, but I can say there are big memory price reductions starting Tuesday, the same day as the a new CPU introduction. The other part of the news will have to wait until Tuesday, but it will be of interest to our off-shore customers.

Posted at 11:42AM Aug 05, 2007 by sunstartupessentials in Sun  |  Comments[0]

At your service...

One of the program benefits that I really like is Startups Ask Sun, where any program member can ask any type of question. This can be presales ("What server should I buy?"), technical ("How do I integrate OpenID into my mashup?"), business ("What are the business terms for licensing Sun See Beyond?"), or whatever ("Yes, it was hot here today - 92F in my home office!"). The concept behind Startups Ask Sun is straightforward: we know that sometimes it can be hard for small startups to get the answers they need from Sun. And this is one place you can. In addition, you can always send email to Jagat.Bhuyan@sun.com, or to me - kevin.ohlson@sun.com.

Posted at 08:49PM Jun 13, 2007 by sunstartupessentials in Sun  |  Comments[0]

What's a thumper?

I get to talk to startups all the time -- one of the wonderful aspects of my job -- and often the conversation is about what Sun hardware can do for them. Given half a chance, I always mention the X4500 (aka Thumper). Twin dual-core Opterons, 16 GB memory, and 24 TB of storage...just the right amount of disk for a growing Web 2.0 company. When I mention all this, and reveal the Startup Essentials program price, it usually take a moment before there's a reaction on the other end of the phone. But it always includes a "Wow, can you tell me more about this?"
Infoworld just published a glowing review. Sun has a detailed video overview posted on YouTube: part one and part two.

Posted at 01:41PM Jun 10, 2007 by sunstartupessentials in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun Blade 6000 Now in Startup Essentials Program

If you're a startup on the verge of greatness, and need record-setting, energy-saving performance, consider the Sun Blade 6000. Announced today, and immediately available through the Startup Essentials program, the Sun Blade 6000 is the ONLY open enterprise blade that offers three CPU architectures: Sun UltraSPARC, AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors. Check out the whole story. And as always, huge discounts for qualified startups.

Posted at 09:59PM Jun 06, 2007 by sunstartupessentials in Sun  |  Comments[0]

The Story So Far ...

Just six months ago, the Sun Startup Essentials Program was created. If you haven’t heard about the Sun Startup Essentials program, be sure to check it out. Simply put, the program is about Sun helping startups.
The qualifications are pretty straightforward: be four years old or less, fewer than 150 employees, based in the US, and have a business presence. It’s free to join, and takes only a few minutes to fill out the application.

So what’s happened in the last six months? We’ve added even more systems, storage, and services to the program, We’ve lowered prices on most of our top selling systems, with discounts up to 60%. We’ve added discounted hosting from Joyent and Navisite. Hundreds of companies have joined the program. We’ve met many of you at events such as STIRR, Web 2.0, Startup Camp, TieCon, and more. Where we can, we try and go the extra mile. And all the while trying to figure out ways to do even more – so stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you have a question about anything in the program, email us at startupcomments at sun.com, or call us at 1-800-503-8296.

Posted at 09:45PM Jun 06, 2007 by sunstartupessentials in Sun  |  Comments[0]