SYSTEMS

Development Environment and Application Availability Broadens for Intel Itanium 2 Architecture: The Itanium Solutions Alliance commends Sun Microsystems and Intel Corporation, a Founding Sponsor of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, on their cooperation to deliver Sun's Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) for Itanium 2-based solutions. Intel is porting and optimizing the code, and support is expected to be included as part of a standard update for Java SE 6 available from Sun next year. The availability of this support will ensure the “write once, run anywhere” philosophy, which helped make the Java Platform a widely-used development environment, continues to extend to developers working on Itanium-based systems. This support for Intel Itanium architecture is expected to increase the availability of Java-based software and broaden solutions choices for end users. The announcement came during an Intel keynote at JavaOne in San Francisco, Calif. by Renee J. James, vice president and general manager of the Software and Solutions Group, where she was joined onstage by Rich Green, executive vice president of software at Sun Microsystems. Sun said it will host the port for Intel Itanium architecture on a Sun website, making it a one-stop shop for developers. “The Itanium Solutions Alliance has made steady progress with increasing application availability on Itanium-based platforms; Java support for Itanium expands that portfolio further,” said Gordon Haff, Principal IT Advisor with Illuminata, Inc. "This Java support also provides significant incremental development opportunities on Itanium-based platforms.” Itanium-based solutions have shown strong market opportunity and solution support in recent years, spurred by a $10 billion joint investment announced by the Itanium Solutions Alliance Founding Sponsors in January 2006 and the release of the Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processor 9000 series in July 2006. Today, there are more than 12,000 Itanium-based applications available from over 2,000 vendors and Itanium-based systems are currently deployed in more than three quarters of the Global 100 Corporations.