SAN FRANCISCO, SunNetwork 2003 Conference and Pavilion -- With more than 60 customers deploying N1 solutions, including Cingular, DaimlerChrysler and Deutsche Bahn AG, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) today delivered new solutions and programs that continue to simplify data center operations and reduce costs. With the continued execution of its N1 strategy, Sun has established itself as the leader in the drive to automate and virtualize network computing. Today Sun also announced expanded partnerships, availability of N1 technologies in iForce(SM) Solution Centers worldwide, an N1 Early Deployment Program and the N1 Center of Excellence which provides dedicated N1 consulting expertise. "Sun is delivering on its road map to provide concrete solutions that will help customers reduce the amount of time and money spent on managing their data centers," said David Nelson-Gal, vice president, N1 and Availability Products for Sun. "With the next phase of N1, we are expanding our product offerings, partnerships and customer engagements. Furthermore, we've always had a strong track record in delivering advanced management solutions for the data center and N1 builds on that success and Sun's expertise in delivering efficient, agile systems architectures." Sun N1(TM) CenterRun, the newest addition to the N1 family, provides application-level provisioning and enables customers to update, configure and migrate data center applications at the touch of a button. Ensuring that N1 is optimized for multi-vendor and multi-platform environments, Sun continues to expand its relationship with key partners. "At Oracle, we share Sun's N1 vision of enabling customers to manage their entire network computing system as one single, easy-to-use system," said Benny Souder, vice president of distributed database development at Oracle. "The combination of N1 and Oracle's new 10G database create an optimized solution for multi-platform data center environments, enabling customers to dynamically allocate resources based on demand and therefore significantly save money on their IT investments." "With N1, Sun is addressing and solving real customer issues today," said Michael Dortch, principal analyst, Robert Frances Group (RFG). "Maximum enterprise elasticity and IT-business alignment require IT application and technology infrastructures that can quickly adapt to changing business needs, while reducing cost and complexity. These are current, real challenges for IT executives and their teams -- challenges Sun is uniquely positioned to help alleviate now." N1 Center of Excellence and Early Deployment Program To provide focused and comprehensive expertise for customers who are implementing complex N1 environments, Sun has established a dedicated, worldwide N1 Center of Excellence. This new organization links Sun's most experienced and knowledgeable N1 consultants and engineers from around the world to capture knowledge and best practices associated with designing and implementing N1 data centers to provide maximum implementation quality for Sun's customers. In addition, to help customers evaluate the benefit of N1 in their specific application environment, the availability of N1 products at eight iForce Solution Centers worldwide is currently available, with plans to expand to other existing centers in the future. Building on the success of the existing N1 pilot program, Sun has launched the N1 Early Deployment Program. The new program will help meet the needs of the increasing number of Sun customers who wish to deploy N1 technology in heterogeneous data centers. N1 Road Map Sun continues to successfully execute on the vision and strategy for automating Network Computing and removing the complexity normally associated with running IT infrastructures. Over the last year, Sun has delivered Infrastructure Provisioning, focused on transforming individual computers, network elements and storage systems into an aggregated pool of resources. The N1 Provisioning Server and N1 Data Platform have been announced and new releases of these products with increased functionality will be rolled out over the next year. Service provisioning is the next key phase in which administrators will be able to define business services such as e-banking and provision the resources required accordingly. The N1 CenterRun solution is a key deliverable in this phase and other solutions will be rolled out over the next calendar year as well. Service Level automation is the third phase on the N1 roadmap, and Sun will deliver on policy-automation solutions in which application service level objectives are automatically maintained by N1.