Sun Top Choice for Web 2.0 Internet Leaders

Addition of MySQL Open Source Database Strengthens Sun’s Industry-Leading Portfolio for Gracenote, LinkedIn and Other Leading Internet Companies
SANTA CLARA, CA March 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) today announced that hundreds of new Web 2.0 companies are leveraging Sun’s open technologies to scale their growing Internet-based business. Gracenote, LinkedIn, RealTime Matrix, Siteworx and SuccessFactors are among a growing list of companies that leverage the Solaris Operating System, Sun Fire x64 and SPARC processor-based servers and Sun StorageTek storage technologies as the platform for growing IT infrastructures. The recent acquisition of MySQL adds open source database software and makes Sun’s portfolio the strongest and most comprehensive in the industry.

The need for additional compute power, longer archive periods and rising power and cooling costs are just some of the issues concurrent across the Web 2.0 landscape. Sun sponsored the first in a series of discussions between end-users and press and analysts in San Francisco to discuss how they are addressing the ever-growing demands for computing power, data storage and open-source software.

“In today’s Internet landscape, we’re forced to do more with less. Sun’s open approach to computing provides us low-cost, high-performance solutions that enable my business to grow and rapidly innovate. There’s not an enterprise vendor in the industry that understands my needs better,” said James Burgess, founder and chief operating officer at Flexilis.

“The Web 2.0 sector is a very exciting place and one that experiences changes on an almost daily basis. Sun understands this and works hard to offer solutions to companies that will allow companies the flexibility and support that they need to be successful,” said Juan Carlos Soto, vice president, global market development and engineering, Sun Microsystems. “We appreciate the difficult decisions behind choosing technology solutions and help ensure we provide the consultancy and expertise that each and every customer gets the right solution for their needs. We are proud to be working with some of the hottest Web properties at the moment and look forward to seeing how they continue to evolve.”

Customers Pushing Web 2.0 Envelope with Help of Sun

FlexilisA leading provider of mobile security solutions, Flexilis ensures that personal information and critical data are safe in an environment where new and ever-changing forms of attack that seek to compromise cellular phones and other mobile devices are being developed on an almost daily basis. Deploying a selection of Sun Fire x64 systems to power its innovative Mobile Security services, Flexilis has created an IT infrastructure that is fast, reliable, and scalable allowing it to stay ahead of hackers and other malicious attacks. With the speed and efficiency of the new Sun platform, the company is able to address security threats before they become security problems and give users peace of mind in an increasingly mobile world.

Gracenote
Gracenote powers mobile music services from the world’s leading handset manufacturers, including Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. For a generation that wants everything in the palm of their hands, Gracenote provides a service with the ability to search and instantly find the recordings the listeners want to hear and display titles, composers and other relevant information on the devices. To get the reliability and performance needs it requires to run its online business, Gracenote chose a selection of Sun x64 servers with Sun’s support services to help ensure that its facilities run smoothly 24/7. Having realized the benefits of deploying the Solaris 10 Operating System and taking advantage of its multithreading capabilities to handle the 2 billion queries it receives on a monthly basis, Gracenote also opted to migrate its non-Sun servers to Solaris to maintain high throughput rates across the board.

“We need fast performance, and when you have hardware in multiple co-location facilities, some of which are remote from your offices, you need to put in equipment that is highly reliable,” says Matthew Leeds, Vice President of Operations for Gracenote. “Sun helps us to deliver a scalable, reliable service that lets us sleep at night because we know that we can rely on the stability and performance of our Sun products.”

LinkedIn
LinkedIn, the fast-growing online network of more than 20 million professionals in over 150 industries from around the world, operates an IT environment consisting of more than 300 Sun x64 and UltraSPARC-based servers running the Solaris 10 Operating System to support its web-tier and database-tier infrastructure. Several factors were key to LinkedIn’s choice of Sun over competing vendors, including Sun’s integration and support for the Solaris and Java software platforms; easy availability of open-source tools such as the Sun Studio compilers and Java Virtual Machines for Opteron, SPARC and Mac; Sun cluster software to create a high-availability solution for multiple datacenters; and finally Sun Services support for Solaris scripting, Java escalations, compiler issues and Java native interfaces. Ultimately, Sun’s ability to deliver a pre-tested and easy to deploy integrated hardware, software and services solution with outstanding price/performance was decisive for LinkedIn.

Real Time Matrix
Real Time Matrix, a provider of real-time content delivery for the social web, represents a special breed of Web 2.0 company that takes advantage of a broad array of Sun’s technology portfolio including Sun UltraSPARC T1 processors, the Solaris 10 Operating System as well as Sun’s newly acquired MySQL database software. With the demands of delivering live news, blog and video content at a rate of 2 million articles per day, Real Time Matrix relies on Sun Fire T1000 and Sun Fire T2000 servers for its high performance on throughput-intensive applications, while at the same time saving on power and space. The Solaris 10 OS helped RTM increase reliability and throughput from a hundred search matches per second up to 10,000 per second per thread. Real Time Matrix relies upon MySQL on the T2000 for fast, dependable delivery of ads to their social network applications at a rate of 750,000 per day and growing. With Sun Fire, Solaris, and MySQL, Real Time Matrix has the power and dependability they require for representing major Brands online, 24 X 7.

Siteworx
Siteworx is a full-service Web strategy consultancy with deep expertise in user experience, application development and interactive marketing. It was named one of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. by Inc. magazine in 2007. Facing the challenge of expanding rapidly without compromising the quality of service for its prestigious clientele, Siteworx wanted to upgrade its technology and streamline processes in order to control costs at two facilities. After evaluating competition that included Dell, the company invested in Sun Fire x64 servers, citing its fast, reliable and energy efficient benefits as key factors behind this decision. Switching from Red Hat Linux to Solaris 10, the company has maintained 100 percent uptime of its servers, reduced total cost of ownership as a direct result of the virtualization capability Solaris 10 offers, and implemented the Solaris ZFS file system feature dramatically improving disk allocation management and freed up administration time.

SuccessFactors
Revolutionizing the future of work, SuccessFactors delivers on-demand performance and talent management solutions to help companies achieve high-performing workforces. With more than 1,750 customers globally and over 3 million users, SuccessFactors is one of the world’s largest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers. The company chose to deploy Sun’s SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers with the Solaris Operating System, due to its price-performance, scalability, and stability. The Sun systems enable SuccessFactors to deliver specialized software services to the company’s fast-growing list of clients.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, Solaris, Sun Fire, StorageTek, OpenSolaris, MySQL and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices.