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SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced a new suite of infrastructure services to help customers reduce costs, improve delivery of results to end-users and reduce complexity of the Network Computer. The new services address growing customer needs for managed services, utility computing and network-based automated management. Sun managed services offer consistent, best practices-driven operation and support while utility computing offers customers flexible business options to better match IT resources to business needs. Sun Net Connect Services enable service delivery via the Internet and include a network-enabled IT resource management tool that helps customers increase availability of their Network Computers and improve overall quality of service. Sun will work with its iForce(SM) partners to deliver these new infrastructure services to co-deliver best-in-class solutions, especially in multivendor operating environments, including UNIX(r), Linux and Windows. "Customers want to reduce the costs and complexities of deploying and managing the Network Computer," stated Patricia C. Sueltz, executive vice president of Sun Services. "But they also want to maintain choice and control over their resources and solutions options. With Sun infrastructure services, customers can concentrate on growing their businesses while Sun and its iForce partners can help them get more out of their IT budgets." Sun Managed Services Help Improve Data Center Service Delivery Sun's new managed services can be delivered either as long-term contract engagements or shorter-term project engagements. Long-term engagements focus on managing IT infrastructure through service level agreements, aiming to improve overall efficiency through process control and management. Shorter-term engagements are aimed at assisting customers to meet their data center operational goals, freeing customers' IT staffs to work on other projects critical to their business needs. As one feature of its managed services, Sun is including a new option, offering Six Sigma methodologies and expertise, to help data centers meet their customers' critical quality requirements. Korean credit card market leader LG Card worked with Sun on a short-term managed services engagement to implement processes to help improve their data center operations and better accommodate customer growth. "We are just beginning to transition to full use of Sun managed services, yet we are already experiencing fewer reported system failures compared to this time last year," stated Moo Hong Lee, senior data center manager, LG Card. "In fact, we are experiencing a tangible decrease in failure time." Sun Utility Computing Helps Manage Costs, Improve Business Agility Sun's initial utility computing offerings include metering and monitoring technology that measures IT resource usage and flexible financing options that include both capacity-on-demand and pay-per-use business models. These can be custom-delivered with other Sun services -- such as Sun's Data Center Readiness Services, Sun managed services, educational services -- to optimize the use of IT resources to meet business requirements. Sun utility computing is available to enterprise data centers and through qualified Sun iForce partners. For example, as part of the Continuum of Services Alliance Program, Sun is collaborating with leading global information technology services company EDS to develop features for delivering the next-generation utility computing model. "We consider utility computing to be a logical step in the evolution of information technology and a natural extension of our IT Services Portfolio," said Al Rasteiro, executive director, EDS Midrange IT Services. "EDS and Sun share a common vision of providing an architecture to deliver a rich suite of best-in-class services to provide measurable economic value to our customers." Sun worked with DMdata, a Scandinavian IT service provider, to implement an open-system architecture for providing computing services using a sophisticated capacity-on-demand business model and utility-based pricing. "Deploying Sun's utility computing services, DMdata is able to leverage IT as a strategic asset," stated Ole Hamann, director, DMdata. "We can now reach more customers through competitive pricing strategies, faster service deployment cycles and richer services, enabled through granular cost control and instant scalability." Services Innovations Feature Sun Net Connect Services As part of its new Sun infrastructure services suite, Sun is introducing Sun Net Connect services. With the introduction of these new services, Sun is announcing the third release of its network-delivery tool, Sun Net Connect, enabling automated management of Sun servers and storage devices. Through Sun Net Connect, Sun customers can gain secure access through the Internet to an extensive knowledge base of system performance and trend data that will help them identify potential anomalies and take corrective action before they affect availability. Customers can begin taking advantage of these services without cost by downloading and installing Net Connect 3.0 at http://www.sun.com/service/support/srs/netconnect/ . Sun infrastructure services are available on a custom priced basis. For more information on Sun infrastructure services, please visit http://www.sun.com/service/infrastructure .