SYSTEMS

SANTA CLARA, Calif.-- Building on its commitment to bring price-performance value to its customers, Sun Microsystems, Inc. recently completed its third-annual Tunathon program -- a collaborative engineering effort between Sun and its ISV partners to improve and optimize application performance on the Sun platform. Sun is the only systems vendor to work with ISVs on this type of program of application optimization and tuning. Sun attracted 45 ISVs to this year's Tunathon program, and fine-tuned more than 60 applications, producing an average performance gain of 31 percent. TUNATHON PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS The ISVs participating in this year's Tunathon included such industry leaders as BeVocal, Gene-IT, Geospiza, i2 Technologies, Intersystems, Interwoven, Marketmax, MSC.Software, RSA Security, SAS, TNO, Ubiquity, VIPTone. Ubiquity, a leading provider of carrier-grade software platforms for fixed and mobile networks, participated in the Tunathon program. Working closely with Sun, the engineering teams were able to optimize the performance of the application by over 70 percent. Due to the collaborative nature of the Tunathon program, Sun likewise was able to fine-tune the upcoming release of its Java(TM) 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) based on direct, real-world-tested feedback from Ubiquity engineers. "We have developed an industry-renowned reputation for the development of new software technology and scalable, distributed architectures within the Java environment. By participating in Sun's Tunathon program and working closely with J2SE(TM) product engineers, we were able to significantly improve the performance of our application on Sun platforms," said Michael Doyle, CTO of Ubiquity. "This intimate collaboration has enabled us to deliver better, more powerful next-generation service and application platforms to our customers, and at the same time, it has given us a truly unique opportunity to relay our input to Sun engineers on the design and development of J2SE going forward, helping to make that platform an even better one for our needs and the needs of our customers." SAS, a leader in providing next generation business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence, realized significant results in last year's Tunathon program and was eager to build upon those efforts and work closely with the Sun engineering team again this year. "While the tangible benefit is clear -- out of 10 test applications, we achieved an average improvement of 59 percent -- the intangible benefit is the creation and continued fostering of a mutually deep engineering relationship," said Clarke Thacher, senior software manager, SAS. "Through Tunathon, SAS and Sun engineers worked side-by-side as virtual team members helping us deliver on our next generation flagship SAS 9.1 release." TUNATHON PROGRAM PROCESS & BENEFITS The developer community is one of Sun's most important partner groups and Sun offers a comprehensive set of resources and programs, including the Tunathon, to nurture and grow its community. For a four-month period at the beginning of each year, Sun product and performance engineering groups analyze and test submitted applications, including Java and J2EE applications, identifying opportunities to optimize and tune application performance without creating customized code. As a result of the Tunathon program process, Sun helps enable the performance gains obtained appear in actual software vendor applications. "No other systems vendor offers a joint engineering program of this kind and of this caliber," said Stans Kleijnen, vice president of market development engineering, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Through the process of collaboration, we're able to deliver to our customers better application performance and higher system utilization, which ultimately results in greater customer satisfaction. Plus, we're able to benefit from the real-world expertise our ISV partners bring to the table, enabling us to enhance our own products' performance to meet ever-changing application requirements."