SYSTEMS

Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Rackable Systems, a leading manufacturer of rack-mount servers for large-scale data center deployments, today announced they signed an agreement whereby Rackable Systems will distribute the Solaris(TM) Operating System for x86 platforms on its industry-first, thermally efficient servers, which can provide twice the density of standard rack-mount solutions with only half the form factor depth. Rackable Systems customers can benefit from the Solaris OS on a variety of platforms, including AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processor-based systems. This agreement further extends the reach of the cost- effective, enterprise-ready and rock solid Solaris OS and helps Sun and Rackable Systems to expand their offerings of integrated solutions. "Partnering with Rackable Systems is part of Sun's core strategy to aggressively work with OEMs and ISVs to increase market penetration, solutions availability and application support for the Solaris OS. Integration partners like Rackable Systems are building new business opportunities with Solaris by leveraging Sun's investment in its x86 offerings," said Ann Wettersten, vice president, software systems marketing, Sun Microsystems. "We are seeing a surge of interest from system builders and integration partners worldwide to distribute the Solaris OS on their platforms. Additionally, with the upcoming launch of Solaris 10 OS, Rackable Systems" customers can look forward to innovative features such as N1(TM) grid containers and dynamic tracing capabilities. Customers can also have the confidence of an operating system that is fully indemnified by Sun." "In addition to offering Solaris for x86 systems as an enterprise-class OS choice to our customers, we will now be able to go one step further and offer hardware configuration certification," said Tom Barton, President & CEO, Rackable Systems. "Customers will now benefit from fully-integrated Sun software and management tools, as well as the solid Solaris product life cycle that guarantees release-to-release binary compatibility." With today's announcement, Sun is further demonstrating its commitment to extend the enterprise-class Solaris OS to a wide choice of Sun and third-party x86 systems. The companies' agreement will help Sun to extend the reach of the Solaris OS into key vertical markets in which Rackable Systems has a strong base of customers, including Internet and Web serving, EDA/chip design, life sciences, government labs, oil and gas exploration, and entertainment. Sun also recently expanded its Solaris Ready program to the x86 platform, helping to enable Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) to certify their products for the Solaris OS. Additionally, the Solaris OS x86 Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) has doubled in size in the last six months and currently includes more than 200 third-party systems. The Solaris OS HCL is aimed at system builders and IHVs looking to leverage the growing market for Solaris x86. Customers can access a detailed Solaris x86 hardware compatibility list at www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl and take advantage of a full range of certified drivers and system configurations, and a growing catalog of third-party and open-source applications.