STORAGE

SANTA CLARA, CA -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced today the opening of three new Sun Storage Centers designed to help customers develop and implement complete storage solutions. The new facilities, located in regions worldwide, will bring together at a Sun site the hardware, software and staff resources needed to architect, test and develop support for specific storage and SAN solutions. The Sun Storage Centers will offer the advantage of testing complex configurations without disrupting customer operations. By doing this, Sun's customers can gain the confidence that when systems are deployed they can be up and running quickly and more efficiently, helping to lower total costs. The three centers are located in Denver, Colorado; Singapore; and the United Kingdom. In these centers, Sun's network storage experts, along with consultants from Sun Professional Services, specialists from Sun Support Services, and system engineers work together to develop the optimum solutions in the shortest possible time. Each center houses a variety of servers, storage devices, the most advanced Sun StorEdge(TM) systems and storage management software as well as best-of-breed partner products. Using a Sun Storage Center as the test bed minimizes the impact on customer datacenter operations and staff resources. ``With the opening of these facilities, we are expanding our ability to develop new, complete storage solutions for our customers,'' said Mark Canepa, Vice President, Sun Network Storage. ``They not only enable the testing of complex environments, they also provide concentrated resources to meet customers' expectations for industry-leading solutions from Sun.'' ``Despite all of the hype and promises, the sad truth is that implementing heterogeneous storage area networks isn't a task for the faint of heart,'' said Adam Couture, storage services analyst for Gartner Dataquest. ``Sun's storage centers mean that complex storage solutions can be configured, installed, tweaked and tested in a non-disruptive environment well before a customer commits mission critical data to it.'' New Facilities Offer Key Benefits The new Storage Centers are an important part of Sun's expanding commitment to developing world-class storage solutions. They offer a variety of benefits for Sun customers. Overall, they bring regional experts closer to the customers to leverage optimum storage hardware and software configurations. At these centers: -- Feasibility work can be done off customer premises to eliminate disruption. -- Sun resources can be scaled to bring best practices to help resolve even complex storage systems issues or help assist customers with specific needs. -- Sun can facilitate specialized training of its partners, such as to support unique equipment configurations. -- Interoperability issues with third-party products can be investigated and resolved. -- Remote access will provide customers in emerging markets with a significant new resource. -- Sun can leverage its existing cooperative support programs to improve the company's ability to support total solutions comprised of server, storage, and SAN interconnect hardware as well as software and services. ``The new Sun Storage Centers unite our leading UNIX[R] platform integration skills with our partners' expertise to deliver storage solutions for customers who need world-class availability, manageability, and total cost of ownership,'' stated Paul Rochester, vice president and general manager of Sun Professional Services. For more information visit www.sun.com