Enhancement to the Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager for Mainframes

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced a significant
performance enhancement to the Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage
Manager 5 (VSM 5), its industry-leading mainframe virtual
technology, that adds 53% more throughput from the initial VSM 5 release
in mid-2006. The latest in mainframe storage innovation from Sun,
today’s announcement further demonstrates Sun’s commitment to investing
in and advancing its entire portfolio of storage and server solutions.

Sun has seen growth in its enterprise mainframe storage business, as
evidenced by:
* Continued dominance of the enterprise tape automation market with more
than 80% of customers in the 1,000-slot and higher class choosing the
Sun StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System (IDC Quarterly View Q2,
2007). The SL8500 seamlessly supports both mainframe and open systems
within the same physical library.
* The industry’s only access-centric tape drive, Sun’s enterprise class
T9840 tape drive product line has shipped more than 100,000 new tape
drives since inception in 1998. Further development continues in the
T9840 drive platform with a fourth generation utilizing the same
physical media forthcoming.
* Recently enhanced VSM 5 technology that has improved its performance
capabilities to 613 megabytes per second – over 50% faster than both
competing storage offerings and earlier VSM release versions. The
performance boost also enhances disaster recovery capabilities to
mission critical data.

“Sun is a world leader in mainframe storage
and our growth in the high-end mainframe storage business is a direct
result of our continued investment in research and development that
allows our customers the industry’s best return on investment. This
continued investment in mainframe technologies has yielded our strongest
mainframe product line-up ever, which is a direct result of the
integration with Sun and StorageTek,” said Jon
Benson, senior vice president, Storage, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Going
forward, Sun will continue to aggressively invest in mainframe storage
solutions that compliment lower-end storage offerings that leverage
open, virtualization technologies like the Solaris Operating System.”

The VSM 5 architecture uses industry leading StorageTek SL8500 tape
library and StorageTek T-series tape drives in its operation and
optimizes tape resources while enhancing tape application performance.
The management of this storage system happens off-load, saving the
overworked customer time and money versus competing virtual storage
systems.

KnowledgeBase Marketing (KBM) relies on the Sun StorageTek 9985
system to support its mainframe environment. Sun recently helped KBM
complete a data center move from its Houston facility to a new corporate
headquarters office in Dallas. As part of the move, KBM refreshed its
mainframe environment. They continue to use the StorageTek 9985 and
purchased the StorageTek SL8500 tape library, which is partitioned
to support three backup environments and upgraded existing virtual
storage manager systems.

"At KnowledgeBase Marketing, effectively supporting our mainframe
environment is a key factor in allowing us to service our clients and
adapt to the changing needs of our business," said Brian Camp, senior
vice president, Infrastructure at KnowledgeBase Marketing. "We chose the
Sun StorageTek 9985 to support our mainframe environment and our more
than 150 TB of data based on Sun’s demonstrated technology expertise in
helping us to address our datacenter needs."

Using the Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager 5 along with Sun
StorageTek T10000 tape drives and cartridges for backup management of
its mainframe environment, TIVIT Terceirização
de Tecnologia e Serviços SA, a Brazil-based
service provider, was able to reduce the volume of data transmitted
between sites significantly.

“By integrating the Sun StorageTek Virtual
Storage Manager System 5 into our datacenter, we have streamlined our
storage infrastructure and improved the operating efficiency of our
mainframe tape drives,” said Valdir da Mata
Firmino, IT Manager, TIVIT Terceirização
de Tecnologia e Serviços SA. “VSM
enables us to optimize our storage resources in our mainframe
environment and better manage the ever growing amount of data we need to
process in order to run our business."

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

KnowledgeBase Marketing