STORAGE

Combines SPARC and x64 Systems Groups and Appoints Executive Vice President, John Fowler, to Lead Combined Organization -- Sun Microsystems today announced the appointment of John Fowler as executive vice president of Sun's Systems Group which combines the SPARC and x64 Systems Groups. Fowler will have the charter and responsibility to deliver all systems products at Sun, from the x64-based servers to the UltraSPARC IV+ products and Coolthreads based T1000 and T2000 systems. David Yen, former executive vice president of Sun's Scalable Systems Group is taking a new role within Sun as EVP of Sun's Storage Group. Effective immediately, both Fowler and Yen will report directly to Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and chief executive officer. Mark Canepa, former head of Sun's Data Management Group, has decided to leave Sun after 10 successful years with the company. "Amplifying the outstanding performance of our UltraSPARC and x64 systems and the growing momentum behind Sun's Storage offerings, now is the time to accelerate growth, and leverage efficiencies," said Schwartz. "We see alignment and acceleration opportunities in combining our systems efforts. Bringing the two organizations together allows us to leverage the best of our industry standard supply chain to fuel Sun's ability to capture the global opportunity to deliver the fastest, and most energy efficient systems on earth." Schwartz continued, "John, Andy Bechtolsheim and our network systems team have done a spectacular job growing our x64 industry standard server business -- which we reported last quarter grew revenue approximately 100 percent year over year. Similarly, David's accomplishments have been outstanding, leading the revitalization of our SPARC server line, and the introduction of the world's highest throughput systems. We are thrilled with the rapid adoption of our Coolthreads T1 and UltraSPARC IV+ SPARC-based servers – which have received 16 world-record benchmarks to date -- driven by David and his team. Both John and David have proven to be "A" players at Sun and are ready for new and exciting challenges." In his former role as EVP of x64 systems, Fowler was focused on delivering industry standard network computing systems for Solaris, Linux and Windows. Fowler and his team are largely responsible for the runaway success of Sun's x64 industry standard servers. As EVP of SPARC systems, Yen was responsible for driving Sun's throughput computing and throughput networking initiatives. Under his leadership, the SPARC systems group has unified Sun's microprocessors, enterprise systems and SPARC-based volume systems initiatives. In addition, he has been a key advocate of Sun's OpenSPARC initiative aimed at the creation of the world's first multi-core, multi-threaded eco-system. Both Fowler and Yen have proven to be great leaders at Sun and have the experience, engineering prowess and insight to successfully manage these critical organizations. The announcement of Sun's new Systems organization and leadership changes come on the heels of other important moves within the company including the appointment of Richard Green to EVP of Software and David Douglas to VP of Eco-Responsibility. In addition, Sun has recently announced the expanded roles of Don Grantham to EVP of Global Sales and Services, Greg Papadopoulos to CTO and EVP of Research and Development, Crawford Beveridge to EVP and Chairman, EMEA, APAC and Americas and Bill MacGowan as Chief Human Resources Officer and EVP of People and Places.