SYSTEMS

This year at EDUCAUSE 2004, Sun Microsystems demonstrates what it takes for higher education institutions to turn their campuses into a unified, seamless, secure, collaborative environment for teaching, learning, research and administration. The Sun booth showcases solutions for building the Digital Campus including the Java Enterprise System for Education, security solutions from DeepNines Technologies and Sun's identity management offerings. "Sun's network computing and identity management solutions, today more than ever, combine to create an IT infrastructure that is fully capable of delivering seamless connectivity to students, staff, administration and alumni," said Kim Jones, vice president of Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "The Digital Campus is about the integration of key technologies -- from portals to digital libraries to student information systems -- in a unified network environment that allows academic institutions to lower costs, eliminate complexity in their IT infrastructure, and ultimately provide a better experience for their users. We're showcasing all the pieces together at EDUCAUSE 2004 to help higher education IT leaders make the right technology decisions as they look to the future." Sun Showcases the Digital Campus With Partners and Customers The Sun booth is a beehive of activity, where Sun and its key partners and customers demonstrate the value of Sun's technologies that enable the Digital Campus. Sun will showcase several innovative technologies that are designed to increase the security and performance of higher education institutions' network environments, while slashing costs and complexity. Sun technologies highlighted at the booth include: -- Java Enterprise System for Education. The Sun Java System is an end-to-end software infrastructure that accelerates service deployment across a range of devices, and cuts cost and complexity in the process. This system is also a simplified business model with easy, predictable, annual pricing that includes all the software and setup, training and support services. -- Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). The soon-to-be-released Solaris OS is the only operating system for institutions building a Digital Campus. Solaris 10 supports critical network capabilities, offering iron-clad security, reliability and performance. All are necessary as educators and students become part of the network of things that is connecting everyone and everything with a digital, electrical or biological heartbeat. An evaluation of Solaris10 is available through Solaris Express. -- Java Architectures Special Interest Group (JA-SIG).JA-SIG represents several hundred universities and colleges and is a key organization in the development of web services, open source portal applications, and adherence to open standards and J2EE architectures. Sun has supported this organization since its inception in 1999 in an effort to help the education community share best practices around the use of Java technologies to implement the Digital Campus. The booth also features integrated demonstrations with Sun's partners: -- Lucent VoIP solution demonstrates innovative voice applications for secure, end-user-defined, anytime/anywhere access for creating a virtual education environment. -- DeepNines Technologies demonstrates their solution for handling perimeter security, firewall, intrusion prevention, and secure content management. -- Internet2 offering extends all Internet2 member universities access to Sun's software portfolio at an affordable subscription-based price. "As a top Internet2 research university, we're interested in Sun's and Internet2's new relationship because it will provide us with better access to new technologies and services," said Michael Pearce, deputy CIO at the University of Southern California. "Sun is one of our strategic partners in high performance computing and communications, and we look forward to building on this foundation." "The combined security offering from DeepNines and Sun has been validated by many major educational systems. The Security Edge Platform integrates our best-of-breed software technology with Sun's superior technological performance to secure the wildest of networks. Together we provide uncompromised value, deliver immediate return and the only security offering today which protects complex environments in front of the router. There is no better alternative," said Dan Jackson, chief operating officer and president for DeepNines Technologies. Sun Addresses Always-On Access to the Digital Campus Leading the dialogue at EDUCAUSE, Jay Visvanathan, Sun's market development manager for Higher Education, will be addressing "always-on" access to highly demanding academic user communities. Defining for attendees what it means to be a Digital Campus, Mr. Visvanathan will discuss Sun's efforts to deliver a shared-services architecture -- a unique architecture that provides the foundation to leverage existing applications and infrastructure in order to provision content, manage identity, and provide customized, portal-based services securely to a diverse user-base. Sun Reinforces Commitment to Collaboration in Education Sun reinforces its commitment to helping academic institutions create a unified network on a global level, highlighting its Sun Technology and Academic Resources (STAR) offering. STAR bundles all of Sun's academic programs in to one portfolio, helping faculty, staff and students to become proficient with Sun and Sun-related technologies. At the show, Sun highlights a key component of the STAR program -- the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC). Education customers can learn how the GELC provides a place to find, develop and share Java-related, open-source education tools, open learning standards implementations, and open course learning materials, ultimately creating a means for sharing best practices and driving global opportunities for lifelong learning.