Sun Strikes Deal With Northrop Grumman/Amdahl

Sun Microsystems Inc has struck a deal with Northrop Grumman, a data center service contractor for the state of Texas, and its systems integration partner Amdahl Corporation for the 2000th sale of Sun's Starfire server. Sun's most powerful server will bolster the state's San Angelo, Texas, data center, helping to slash taxpayer costs through server consolidation and the rental of web-based software applications to more than 250 state agencies.

The State of Texas stands to reap huge cost savings by consolidating disparate state mainframe computers owned by individual agencies into one new data center and by tapping the hot new trend of renting applications from a central server. With a pay-for-play philosophy in mind, the state will capitalize on Sun's capacity-on-demand program and shell out cash only for the server processing power that it needs to satisfy the various agencies' application demands. If demand for applications goes up, then Northrop Grumman flips on additional CPUs (central processing units), paying Amdahl Corporation for no more than the demand needed.

"On behalf of the state of Texas, we will be at the heart of efforts to reduce the number of state data centers and push their consolidation into one efficient data center," said Gregg Donley, president of Operations and Services for Logicon, the Northrop Grumman subsidiary managing the data center. "Sun's Starfire server is ideal for this consolidation because of its flexibility in supporting multiple domains (each domain will support a state agency or department) and allowing the domains to be altered as state agency needs change."

Once the Sun server is operational, the state's agencies will be able to subscribe to PeopleSoft's financial and human resources applications, customized for state governments. Database, e-commerce and other applications will be available at a later date.

Formerly managed by the state, Texas' data centers were privatized to draw on the technical talent pool available from companies such as Northrop Grumman, Amdahl and Sun and to help ensure continuous service to all state agencies.

Jobs, Education Boost Expected for West Texas

With the backing of Robert Junell, the chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, the state appropriated the funds to build this data center at Angelo State University, one of the leading academic centers in West Texas.

To feed the data center with information-technology experts, Northrop Grumman, Amdahl and Sun Microsystems, teaming with the university, will devise educational curriculum, data center internships and scholarships for budding technologists.

"We are bringing the dot-gov future to the state of Texas," said Junell. "With our private sector technology partners running this new data center and managing software rentals to our state agencies, we in the state government can focus on what we do best, whether its child welfare or public schools or transportation infrastructure."

"For about a year, Northrop Grumman, Amdahl and Sun have been in talks with the state of Texas about a new, cutting-edge way to manage technology resources -- the application service provider model," said Steve Campbell, Sun's director of marketing for the Data Center and High-Performance Computing Group. "Now with best-of-breed vendors signed up, we will be able to deliver on this vision to the State, whose taxpayers will cash in on the lower technology costs."

"With our technology partners, we will be able to deliver the most powerful hardware platform available today to the state of Texas, while providing the proper design, implementation, management and support of its infrastructure," said Alan Bell, president of Amdahl Services Division. As part of an integration agreement with Sun, this new server represents the sale of Amdahl Corporation's 100th Starfire. Product shipment was completed in March.

About the Sun Enterprise 10000 Server

The mainframe-class Sun Enterprise 10000, or Starfire, server provides up to 16 Dynamic System Domains; Sun is the only UNIX platform vendor to offer this feature. The Starfire server enables customers to run the mostdemanding, mission-critical, multi-terabyte applications for data warehousing, decision support, online transaction processing and data analytics on a single, scalable server. The system hosts more than 12,700 applications for the Solaris Operating Environment and can be clustered with up to four nodes for even greater availability. The 64-CPU Sun Enterprise 10000 server contains up to 64 GB of shared memory and can support more than 60 TB of storage to confidently handle extreme data warehousing situations. The Starfire product was recently bolstered with the addition of advanced features such as Automated Dynamic Reconfiguration (ADR) and InterDomain Networks (IDN).

About Sun Microsystems Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- The Network Is The Computer -- has propelled Sun Microsystems Inc, to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses. With $14 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at sun.com.

Contact Dave Blackburn of Sun Microsystems Inc, 650-786-4681, dave.blackburn@sun.com.