ENGINEERING

DENVER, CO -- Today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and AVAKI Corporation, announced a joint effort to further the advancement of their grid technologies to accelerate the adoption of grid computing in enterprises worldwide. The parties will focus on extending the existing interfaces between Sun's distributed resource management software, Sun(TM) Grid Engine 5.2.3 software, and AVAKI 2.0, to allow enterprise customers deploying cluster grids to enjoy the full benefits of the grid computing model. As users are able to increase productivity through more efficient job handling and CPU utilization, they also gain secure, virtualized access to data and compute resources in wide-area, multi- platform environments, as a result of tried and tested best-of-breed Sun and AVAKI solutions. Sun Grid Engine software manages and submits jobs to specified machines within a cluster, facilitating the processing of compute intensive tasks and maximizing the available power of the local network. AVAKI 2.0 unifies and makes transparently available all networked resources -- data, processing, and applications -- in a single virtual environment, an AVAKI grid. By integrating the two, AVAKI and Sun empower IT departments to easily implement campus grids, by linking together local cluster grids within a wide area environment -- potentially distributed across the world -- resulting in much higher productivity across the enterprise. This latest development is an important milestone according to Wolfgang Gentzsch, director of Grid Computing at Sun Microsystems. ``Our efforts with AVAKI are a prime example of our commitment to making the global grid a reality. While other vendors are just talking about it, AVAKI and Sun are solving the problem of resource sharing, access and security across global enterprise departments, customers and partners.'' AVAKI is committed to working in the grid computing arena with open standards and industry collaborations. Testaments to this commitment are the number of industry projects and organizations that AVAKI has been asked to be a part of from inception, including Sun's Project JXTA. In addition, AVAKI has completed Sun's Grid Computing Certification Program and is now in a position to readily deploy and integrate AVAKI 2.0 and Sun Grid Engine software. ``As Wolfgang states, Sun and AVAKI have been working together on grid and other related initiatives,'' said David Fish, CEO of AVAKI. ``We are pleased to have the opportunity to work together to create a global grid infrastructure for enterprises around the world.'' For additional information visit www.sun.com