SANTA CLARA, CA -- Today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) celebrates the fifth birthday of its Sun Enterprise(TM) 10000 server, a.k.a. Starfire(TM). When introduced in January 1997, Starfire was the first system to offer mainframe-class features with enterprise network computing power, rewriting the rules for data center computing. Today, Sun continues to lead in the high-end, and advancements based on Starfire technology have been driven into a new generation of high-end and midrange servers. Its innovative technologies reportedly set the standard for the next generation of high-end systems and changed the dynamics of the server industry for good. Features such as Dynamic System Domains, the first partitioning capabilities in a UNIX® system; dynamic reconfiguration, whereby data center managers create or resize partitions on the fly -- without rebooting; and the industry-leading Solaris(TM) Operating Environment helped make Starfire the leading high-end UNIX server. With its reliability, availability, and serviceability, Sun's Enterprise 10000 system has helped companies like Heineken Spain, Littlewoods, Oxford Glycosciences, Sabre, Telefonica Moviles, and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) capitalize on the phenomenal growth of the Internet in the late 1990's and better manage their back-end database and online transaction processing systems. ``The main reason we chose Sun was that we had plans to grow the business substantially, and we wanted a platform which would allow us to do that,'' said David Hallett, Group IT Director at Littlewoods, Britain's largest private company and one of Europe's largest retailers. ``You get the feeling that you're in the hands of the experts. If I don't have that feeling, I get worried. Having it helps me to sleep at night.'' ``The Starfire server raised the bar on high-end UNIX server systems,'' said Jean S. Bozman, Research Director of IDC's Global Enterprise Server Solutions group, ``It was an extremely well-balanced system that offered powerful throughput for business applications, with extraordinary headroom of up to 64 processors -- at a time when most UNIX servers had fewer than 24 processors. With more than 7,500 new systems and upgrade units shipped since its launch, Sun's Enterprise 10000 server is an important part of the corporate data-center world, where high-end servers anchor mission-critical IT operations. Now, its successor, the Sun Fire(TM) 15K server, can be expected to carry on this tradition in the high-end server space.'' The same benefits that made Starfire the go-to system for rapid growth, today make it the most compelling solution for customers looking to reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO). With dynamic partitioning, companies can consolidate multiple servers running numerous applications onto one Starfire server with isolated environments for each application. Enhanced consolidation offerings and mainframe rehosting solutions can also help customers dramatically lower TCO. Starfire technology also helped define a new class of data center servers, the Sun Fire Midframe. By integrating Starfire's mainframe-class availability and partitioning capabilities into the midrange, the Sun Fire 3800 to 6800 family of servers is once again rewriting the rules for enterprise computing. More recently, Sun introduced a new high-end flagship, the Sun Fire 15K server. With fifth-generation dynamic system domains, up to 106 processors and more than 1/2 terabyte of memory, the Sun Fire 15K server builds upon Sun's success of delivering the leading high-end solutions to the world's most demanding world-class customers. ``With features like massive scalability, mainframe-like RAS, and flexible resource management that remain at the top of the requirements list of data center managers, organizations across all industries running mission-critical applications still demand Sun's Enterprise 10000 system,'' said Clark Masters, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Systems Products, Sun Microsystems, Inc. ``Sun continues to define the rules for data center computing, enabling customers to run the most demanding, multi-terabyte applications for data warehousing, decision support, online transaction processing and technical computing. With Starfire, Sun Fire Midframe, and Sun Fire 15K servers, Sun remains the ultimate data center powerhouse.'' For further information visit www.sun.com