ACADEMIA

CHICAGO, RETAIL SYSTEMS 2003 (Booth# 1907) -- With a number of global account wins and partner alliances under its belt, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) continues to gain significant traction in the worldwide retail market. To date, such industry-leading U.S. customers as Gap Inc., Wegman's Food Markets, Office Max, Ross Stores, Ratner Company LLC, Men's Wearhouse, Home Depot Design Expo, among others have either switched from another platform to Sun or have added additional Sun hardware and software to their existing systems. Sun also has gained a major foothold in the international arena with more than 20 major customer wins in Europe. In the UK alone Sun is working with 17 retailers, including Sainsbury, Littlewoods, Matalan, John Lewis Partnership, Lastminute, BAA, ASWatson, Screwfix (Kingfisher plc), Opodo, Iceland Big Food Group, Dixons, Boots Wellbeing, Virgin Wines, Jessops, Scottish & Newcastle and Thompson. Other project wins in France include Agapes, Lyreco and Kiabi. Sun is also making headway in the Asia-Pacific region working on nearly 10 projects in strategic retail locations such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Korea. To date, Sun's Asia-Pacific customers include Fast Retailing, AEON Group, Kyobo Book Store, LG Homeshopping, Hyundai Department Store and Shinsegae. "We chose the Sun platform because of its scalability, reliability and overall value," said Don Reeve, senior vice president and CIO of Wegmans, a. 65-store supermarket chain in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Ross Stores also looked to Sun and its iForce(SM) Partners, including Deloitte Consulting, and Retek, to deploy a next-generation ERP solution powered by Sun Fire(TM)15K servers running the Solaris(TM) Operating System and a Sun StorEdge 9980 storage area network. "When Ross Stores chooses its technology partners, we look for a team that truly understands our business and will put in the long hours to make sure the solution is 100-percent on target. Sun has proven it is a technology vendor of this caliber and we're happy to be working with them," said Richard White, CIO of Ross Stores. Ratner Companies, a nationwide chain of hair salons, recently replaced its antiquated Microsoft DOS-based systems and switched to the Sun platform. "We value low-cost products that don't compromise quality, which is the crux of Sun's new low-cost computing initiative for retailers. Sun systems running the Solaris OS offered one of the best cost-benefit ratios of all the platforms we evaluated. We expect that its new low-cost systems will allow us to re-engineer labor-intensive work flow processes, helping us lower our total cost of ownership, while increasing our productivity," said Robert Ampula, CIO, Ratner Companies. Earlier this year, Gap Inc., the world's largest international fashion retailer, selected a variety of systems, software and services from Sun and its partners to build an open, standards-based, cost effective solution to run many business processes ranging from store systems support to headquarter applications through to distribution centers. Additionally, Home Depot's Expo Design Center stores recently installed a Sun-powered virtual art gallery kiosk designed by Evviva Virtual Art Solutions. The kiosks, which allow customers to select from more than 1,000 reprints of well-known artists, are currently in stores in San Diego, Scottsdale and Dallas. The solution is powered by Java(TM) technology and the low-cost Sun Cobalt Qube(TM) appliance server, making it the world's first real-world example of an appliance-based kiosk for retail. Sun worked closely with iForce partner Apunix to take the concept of self-service and customizable products in retail to the next level. "Based on our current successes and our growing list of retail partners, in addition to the opportunities on the table right now, our recently announced low-cost computing initiative is building an even brighter future for Sun in retail," said Bob DeLaney, director of retail industry solutions for Sun. "Retailers today are looking for simple solutions that fit their budgets and scale with their unpredictable demands. Sun's low-cost, Intel-based computing platform presents a great opportunity for our partners and customers alike to succeed in this highly competitive marketplace." Sun in Retail Over the past several years, Sun has become a leader in the retail sector, providing highly scalable, easily manageable open platforms for customers. Today, Sun's global portfolio of retail customers includes specialty hard and soft goods retailers, discount and mass merchandisers, department stores, food service companies, supermarkets, convenience stores, chain drug stores, and electronic retailing, catalog and home shopping merchants. Running Sun ONE software on Sun Fire servers, and utilizing Sun Cobalt server appliances, Sun StorEdge(TM) arrays, in addition to leveraging Sun's Java(TM) technologies, retailers are finding the freedom of choice and business agility they need to stay competitive in this market.