"Customers have made Sun's SPARC Enterprise servers and the Solaris OS the backbone of mission critical enterprise deployments from the Web-tier to the back office", stated John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group. "From mainframe-like RAS capabilities in open enterprise systems, to energy-efficient CMT servers and open storage, Sun has upped the ante on innovation with each successive generation of products. Customers driving their businesses on powerful platforms like those from Oracle demand the most reliable, efficient and scalable systems."

Sun's new reference configurations help customers to quickly deploy data warehouses by simplifying the sizing process and product selection as well as providing horizontal and vertical configuration comparisons. Sun's complete offering for the BIDW industry couples Oracle Database 10g and 11g with the high reliability and scalability of Sun's enterprise-class SPARC Enterprise servers and storage and the virtually unparalleled security, scalability and flexibility of Solaris - the industry's number 1 UNIX OS.

Catalyzing the rapid build out of enterprise-class SPARC servers in emerging markets, Sun has invested in Partner Solution Centers in Delhi, India and Shenzhen,China, as well as the Oracle Solution Center in Chengdu, China, to further ISV and systems integrator (SI) adoption of Oracle Applications on the SPARC/Solaris platform. Sun also plans to roll out a range of sales initiatives on key market fronts including enterprise Grids, CRM and data warehouse deployments and will launch the Sun-Oracle Partner Hub in Istanbul by the end of 2008.

Sun's midrange and high-end SPARC Enterprise server line was recently refreshed with new quad-core SPARC64 VII processors, creating a highly scalable, enterprise-class virtualization and consolidation platform with up to 80 percent better performance on commercial applications and up to 200 percent better performance on HPC workloads, using 44 percent less energy per core. The SPARC64 VII processor is also available as an option for seamless upgrades in existing SPARC Enterprise M4000 - M9000 servers.

Customers across the globe are adopting Sun's SPARC Enterprise servers and Sun storage for their Oracle deployments in markets including Web 2.0, human resources, and media and entertainment.

Sun's SPARC Enterprise servers (from one to 64 sockets) with Oracle Database and the Solaris 10 OS, have posted seven world records since September 2007 on a diversity of prominent benchmarks - from enterprise resource planning (ERP) to Business Intelligence Data Warehousing (BIDW).

Sun is also extending offers to current Sun enterprise system customers for its Sun SPARC Enterprise midrange and high-end servers. Upgrades from Sun Enterprise E4500, E5500, E6500, E10000, Sun Fire 3800, 4800, F6800, F12K, F15K, Sun Fire E6900, E20K and E25K systems are eligible for double trade-in value under the Sun Upgrade Advantage Programme.