SYSTEMS

At the NewEnergy Forum 2005, the conference for energy industry leaders, Sun Microsystems today announced that NewEnergy Associates, a Siemens Company and provider of end-to-end energy IT and consulting solutions for decision support and energy operations, has selected Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers over all top-tier x64 server offerings, and the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) over standard Linux distributions as part of its high-performance grid infrastructure. The solution, powered by the AMD Opteron processor, is designed to accelerate applications by increasing computational power, maximize system efficiency and uptime, and provide 30 percent lower heat output than competing alternatives. With the advent of grid computing and Monte Carlo analysis (data obtained by simulating a statistical model in which all parameters are numerical), NewEnergy's datacenter has grown rapidly. Due to an increase in the computational power used for these simulations, NewEnergy's datacenter experienced a dramatic increase in air-conditioning costs caused by the heat created by the large numbers of servers that were not from Sun. Sun's x64 servers run 30 percent cooler than competing alternatives, making them an ideal choice. In addition to being a Sun customer, NewEnergy Associates, a Siemens Company provides software, energy business solutions and industry expertise to more than 200 clients throughout the world. The company enables customers to meet the largest challenges in strategic and financial planning, energy market and transmission analysis, energy trading, risk management, as well as retail and wholesale energy market operations. "After 29 years of business, for the first time NewEnergy is no longer vendor agnostic," said Neal Tisdale, vice president of software development, NewEnergy Associates. "We owe it to our customers to recommend the virtually unmatched price-performance and reduced heat generation of Sun's x64 server line powered by the AMD Opteron processor over all other tier-one vendors evaluated. The ability to upgrade to higher throughput dual-core CPU's without increasing the heat output, and the flexibility to run Solaris OS, Windows or standard Linux distributions, provides a great investment and a dramatic decrease in operational costs." In addition, NewEnergy selected Solaris 10, over competing operating systems, for its unparalleled track record, its innovative and comprehensive Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) capability, expansive global support network, and the ability of Solaris 10 to be binary-compatible with other versions. "As a leading global provider of energy IT solutions expertise, NewEnergy Associates represents a growing category of customers who are demanding more from their IT systems," said Lisa Sieker, vice president of marketing, Network Systems Group at Sun Microsystems. "With extreme performance, reliability, serviceability and flexibility, Sun's x64 systems provide NewEnergy with virtually unrivaled return on enterprise IT investment. These stellar benefits, coupled with the powerful and innovative features of Solaris 10, provide a winning combination for NewEnergy Associates, and its need for higher computational grid technology." NewEnergy's investment in Sun technology includes Java(TM) technology, Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition, the Solaris 10 OS, and latest Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers. Sun's technology offerings help NewEnergy establish a thorough grid computing infrastructure, run Oracle databases with large memory requirements, and conduct faster risk analysis, which previously required overnight computations. More information on NewEnergy Associates, a Siemens Company can be found at: http://www.newenergyassoc.com/. For more information about Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers, please visit: http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/