Sun Microsystems Client Solutions Team Helps Education Institutions Architect The Digital Campus

Released on = October 23, 2004, 2:35 pm

Press Release Author = Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Industry = Software

Press Release Summary = Sun Microsystems Client Solutions Team Helps Education Institutions Architect The Digital Campus
End-to-End Approach Delivers Open, Secure and Affordable Systems to Universities

Press Release Body = Sun Microsystems Client Solutions Team Helps Education Institutions Architect The Digital Campus End-to-End Approach Delivers Open, Secure and Affordable Systems to Universities

DENVER, CO - EDUCAUSE Booth #803 -- October 20, 2004 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that its Sun Client Solutions team is providing unparalleled value to education organizations through its integrated approach of delivering open, secure and affordable systems combined with trained consulting personnel. The Sun Client Solutions team is fast becoming the industry's expert in bringing the Digital Campus experience to life. Allowing education institutions to cut costs, simplify their IT architectures and speed technology deployment, Sun Client Solutions is making the campus of the future a reality today.

"Sun's vision and strategy for building the Digital Campus is about the integration of key technologies in a unified network environment that allows academic institutions to lower costs, eliminate complexity in their IT infrastructure, and ultimately provide a better experience for their users. But, they need the right service professionals to help turn that vision into reality," said Kim Jones, vice president of Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "We're delivering highly specialized expertise with world-class, certified project management support and leveraging hundreds of partners. Educational institutions can choose the optimal solution for their campus while Sun manages and configures their IT infrastructure. Sun's ability to provide universities with choice, value, and control is making a difference for our education customers and partners."

Sun's Client Solutions team is prepared today to work with all education institutions on complex projects to deliver business value in areas such as:

Provisioning and identity management;
Rearchitecting applications for web services infrastructures;
Implementing campus-wide email, LDAP, and portal projects;
Reducing cost and complexity by consolidating servers and utilizing virtualization and provisioning technologies;
Implementing low-cost, low-maintenance alternative desktop strategies;
Architecting and implementing centralized storage networks;
Teaching and implementing ITIL standard datacenter best practices;
Defining disaster recovery policies and implementing on- or off-site disaster recovery architectures for applications and storage;
Manageability services, from staff augmentation through hosting;
Architecting world class platform support and datacenter practices for running ERP systems such as SCT, PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle;
Heterogeneous enterprise security assessments, security policy review enhancement, and heterogeneous system hardening services; and
Complex platform migrations from legacy systems.
Sun Client Solutions supports Education customers from K-12 schools through higher education, including more than 200 university members of Internet2. Recent engagements include:

University of Maryland
Utilizing Sun products, University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is now able to expand its business and academic operations with a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure. The result gives students, faculty, and staff easier and faster access to online tools and information. The UMUC solution is based on Sun's UltraSPARC[R] systems and the Solaris Operating System to run its global PeopleSoft implementation. This two-year project supported by Sun Client Solutions allows UMUC to consolidate its three disparate systems into one central IT database, to manage all financial, human resource, and student administration functions globally.

The George Washington University
Wanting to provide students and faculty with more robust Web-based applications while laying the foundation to become a service provider to users throughout the University and its geographically dispersed campuses in the District of Columbia and Virginia, The George Washington University (GW) turned to Sun for an end-to-end solution. Sun Client Solutions consultants are working with the GW Information Systems and Services Department on consolidating applications and services to a Sun platform infrastructure powered by Sun Fire 15K, V240, and V1280 servers, including a Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform, running the Solaris Operating System connected to a storage area network (SAN) based on Sun StorEdge 3310 systems. Online and instructor-led training on Sun hardware and software technologies is part of the solution. GW expects to lower its total cost of ownership while improving system availability. The new application services and platform infrastructure will also help GW reduce deployment cycles for future initiatives.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Web Site = http://sun.com

Contact Details = Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Kristen Hyland
650.248.3462
kristen.hyland@sun.com