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SANTA CLARA, Calif., -- Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW) signed 78 new wins on Kirchman's Bankway product in the last 90 days by addressing the challenges of mid-sized banks, or those with assets from $100,000 to $5 billion. Since October, Sun has been quietly gaining marketshare from competitors and tallying up its successes with mid-size financial institutions. Florida-based Kirchman Corporation, a Sun iForce partner, recently sold its core banking solution product Bankway to TowneBank, the largest FDIC-regulated bank in Virginia that originated in a garage four years ago. TowneBank estimated savings of $500,000 in the first year of running Kirchman's Bankway solution on Sun, and $1 million per year by 2007. "When we were evaluating whether an IBM mainframe or open systems platform would serve the bank's needs best, Sun was the only IT vendor whose products met the criteria for ease of migration, scalability, reliability and lower cost of operations," said Keith Horton, executive vice president of TowneBank Technology and Operations. "Because of the features, functions and cost, Sun is the best solution for our bank." Recent Kirchman/Sun banking contracts to take advantage of the enterprise-class features and entry-level prices of the Sun Fire V880s servers include Pennsylvania-based Mars National Bank (assets of $258 million), Ohio-based Security National Bank (assets of $868 million), Farmers Bank of Lincoln, Neb. (assets of $65 million), Missouri-based Community Bank (assets of $38.5 million) and Missouri-based Landrum Holding Company (assets of $850 million). Additionally, Intrieve Corporation, eBank Systems, SBS Datacenter and Brasfield Data Services, providers of outsourced technology solutions to financial institutions, are moving a total of 72 banks to the Sun platform from proprietary systems to help them lower costs. "You just can't beat Sun for scalability, reliability and conserving our customers' budgets," said Rachel Landrum, president of Kirchman Corporation. "The clincher was Sun's acquisition of the Mainframe Transaction Processing [MTP] software, which was the solution we'd been using to rehost our mainframe applications and data to UNIX." Sun's mainframe rehosting solutions allow customers to run their existing mainframe applications unmodified, in a contemporary computing environment. Sun currently has over 950 MTP software installations worldwide, bringing 100 additional sites online since June 2002. Companies have saved 50 percent or more when using Sun's mainframe rehosting solutions to move off the mainframe onto Sun. "Retail bankers today have only three business requirements," said David Moore, Global Banking Manager for Sun. "Building new revenue streams, reducing costs and increasing customer loyalty by finding more efficient ways to add new products and services through an open IT infrastructure. Sun provides an excellent solution for banks striving to achieve these goals."