Sun Microsystems Expands Sun Startup Essentials Program to Emerging Markets in Asia

Program Offers Eligible Startups Deep Discounts on Sun Products and Services.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.-Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that it is expanding its successful Sun Startups Essentials program into the People’s Republic of China(PRC) and India to help early stage companies get up and running quickly while conserving cash in these emerging markets. The program offers startups discounts on a range of Sun’s industry-leading technologies and services and the ability to subscribe to Web hosting services from Sun partners at deeply discounted rates.

In today’s market, early stage companies are challenged to bring highly available and scalable applications to market quickly and cost-effectively. These startup companies are constantly looking for ways to become more efficient with limited resources while planning for long-term success. Sun provides startups with an opportunity to reach their full potential through the Sun Startup Essentials program. Launched in the United States in November 2006, approximately 700 US companies have applied for Sun Startup Essentials, while many more outside the US have expressed interest. In response to large demand from startups based outside the United States, Sun is extending the program to the PRC and India, two regions seeing a significant increase in both developers and start up companies. This extension is the first step in Sun’s larger BRICK (Brazil, Russia, India, China and Korea) strategy to expand programs to the world’s most vibrant, rapidly emerging markets.

Sun is hosting an event in Beijing, China with keynote presentations delivered by Mr. Qiu Shan Qin, deputy director, Ministry of Information, China Software and Integrated Circuit Platform (SCIP); Juan Carlos Soto, vice president of Market Development at Sun, and Fred Sit, corporate director at Sun PRC. The event will provide an overview of the Sun Startup Essentials program and discussions will focus on how the startup community can access key technology and services to help them stay ahead of competition and get to market quickly. Sun and CSIP will discuss how they will work together to help strengthen and grow the startup community in China.

“Sun is an avid supporter of building communities and through the Sun Startup Essentials program we’re able to share our experience as well as offer substantial discounts to these early stage companies,” said Juan Carlos Soto, VP of Market Development at Sun Microsystems. “By making the program available in these emerging markets in Asia, we’re tapping into an innovative community that adopts and adapts new technology rapidly and enabling startups to get to market quickly and economically.”

Sun’s Startup Essentials program enabled SearchForce Inc., a market leader in Search Engine Marketing (SEM), to upgrade from Dell and Linux to an enterprise class architecture based on the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), Sun Fire T1000s and Sun Fire T2000s, and Sun StorageTek 6140 SAN arrays.

“There was really no comparison,” said David Simon, Chairman of SearchForce. “Sun was unmatched by any other vendor, including HP, IBM and Dell, for price, performance and scalability. SearchForce manages more than 25 million keywords and over $100 million in SEM spend through direct and indirect customers and is growing rapidly; our new architecture based on the Solaris 10 OS gives us the ability to scale on demand and exceed our customer requirements.”

SearchForce, Inc. now provides an end-to-end Sun-based solution, including a Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application running on the Solaris 10 OS and hosted on Sun Fire T1000, Sun Fire T2000, and Sun Fire X4100 M2 servers.

Sun Startup Essentials Program

Like the U.S. program, the Sun Startup Essentials program in the PRC and India helps eligible startup companies by allowing them to purchase a range of discounted Sun products and services, including the award-winning Sun Fire x64 servers and Sun Fire servers with CoolThreads technology. Program members can also work with Sun partners Joyent and NaviSite to rent discounted Web hosting infrastructure based on Sun technologies. In addition to offering products and services to eligible PRC- and India-based startup companies, Sun is also offering free technical advice via email and access to free software, such as Apache, MySQL and Perl (AMP), optimized to run on the Solaris 10 OS.

To join the program and have direct online access to these offerings, please visit http://www.sun.com/startupessentials