SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced record-breaking performance for PeopleSoft 8 Payroll on the Sun Fire(TM) 6800 server. The results reveal the Sun Fire system running the Solaris(TM) 8 Operating Environment improved check processing time by 17 percent compared to competing UNIX(R) platform-based systems demonstrating how customers can realize true benefits running PeopleSoft's business-critical applications on the Sun server platform. Sun tested the batch performance of the Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation and Payroll Confirmation processes in PeopleSoft 8, Payroll (North American) on a 24-processor Sun Fire 6800 Midframe server running 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC(R) III Cu processors, the Solaris 8 OE and the IBM DB2 Universal Database Enterprise Edition. The system also was configured with the Sun StorEdge(TM) A5200 array, the high-density, high-availability data storage solution for the enterprise. With rock-solid availability and hot-swappable components that are common to the entire Sun Fire Midframe and high-end family of servers, the Sun Fire 6800 server helps maximize application service levels with mainframe-class availability features such as full hardware redundancy, Dynamic System Domains, Dynamic Reconfiguration, Hot CPU upgrades and end-to- end data integrity. Today's results are evidence of an ongoing commitment by Sun to deliver robust, high performance solutions that meet and exceed the needs of the current global e-business market.