Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced that Japan's central market, the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Inc., has selected the Sun architecture as the common platform of choice for its multiple information systems. With the development of the consolidated platform, the Tokyo Stock Exchange expects to reduce spending on information systems by 20 percent in the next five years. Designed to reduce overall costs while increasing the reliability, flexibility and security required by the global securities marketplace, the Tokyo Stock Exchange's consolidated platform will run entirely on Sun servers and the Solaris Operating System, and will feature the Oracle 10g database software and Oracle Real Application Clusters. "Our goal with this project is to take the complexity and escalating costs out of our current IT infrastructure by standardizing on a solid, reliable and open platform that we can grow with," said Masayuki Hirose, director of system developments for information services, Tokyo Stock Exchange. "With Sun as the foundation for our consolidated platform, we know we have a dynamic and open architecture that will enable better performance and more efficient allocation of resources, helping us deliver the high security and high quality of service demanded by the market. Over the next five years, we expect to see significant savings simply by switching to this world-class platform." "Sun is laser focused on delivering the solutions that matter to the financial services industry. Across the board, financial institutions are under pressure to add increased value for customers at reduced costs. Sun's open and cost-effective systems fulfill this requirement, while providing the performance, scalability and security that is imperative in their businesses," said Stuart Wells, senior vice president, Financial Services at Sun. "Sun's long-time leadership and history in this market is rooted in meeting the needs of the world's most demanding customers, and we are thrilled to be working with the Tokyo Stock Exchange on this major initiative." The decision to create a consolidated platform will allow the Tokyo Stock Exchange to respond quickly and flexibly to changes surrounding the securities market, bringing greater reliability, availability and robustness to the system. The consolidated platform will be completed by fiscal year 2005, and the information systems will be fully incorporated into the platform by the end of fiscal year 2008. As Japan's central market, the Tokyo Stock Exchange has expanded with the growth of the Japanese economy. With a market capitalization of 360 trillion yen (U.S. $3.4 trillion) and a daily trading value of 1.2 trillion yen (U.S. $11 billion), the Tokyo Stock Exchange boasts of one of the world's largest and most liquid markets.