Announce Availability of Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
“Our customers and partners want to maximize their business efficiency and we are helping them do that, by opening the new Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center,” said Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing at Microsoft. “The center will provide a setting for hands-on testing and tuning of Sun/Microsoft solutions and help our joint customers achieve unprecedented performance results for their standardized and home-grown solutions. It is consistent with our recently announced interoperability principles, which guide steps that we are taking, on our own and in collaboration with others, to enhance interoperability in the marketplace for the benefit of customers.”
“The new Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center will help provide our joint customers with a testbed for running key Microsoft applications on Sun’s x64 servers and help ensure more seamless integration between the technologies,” said Lisa Sieker, vice president of Systems Marketing, Sun Microsystems. “Additionally, with the new Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Sun’s expertise in x64 servers, storage and 64-bit database architectures will enable customers to significantly reduce email TCO and ease the transition to the new 64-bit product.”
Objectives of the Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center will include optimization of Microsoft applications on Sun x64 systems and storage, and promotion of full interoperability in application areas such as virtualization, Java technology, systems management, and identity. Additionally, the Center will collaborate with authorized Sun(SM) Solution Centers to support customers in running their own proofs-of-concept testing. Customers can minimize their risk and shorten time to deployment by simulating their own environment, with access to top architects from both Sun and Microsoft.
The Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center serves as a working lab for tuning, benchmarking and interoperability solutions creation. It will be designed to include:
- A demonstration and testing area for Windows on Sun x64 systems and storage;
- A lab space for customer proofs-of-concept focused on Windows Server 2008 on Sun x64 systems and storage;
- The ability to certify Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), including Sun’s Java Runtime Environment (JRE) software for and with Microsoft operating environments and applications;
- Joint work to help enable cross-platform server virtualization, including Windows Hyper-V and Sun xVM software;
- Cross-company collaboration to allow Sun Ray thin client software to provide a first-rate virtual desktop for the Windows environment and supports Windows technologies.
One of the first results of the recently increased collaboration is the availability of the Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. This solution will help enable enterprise customers to better manage e-mail growth and realize the benefits of Exchange Server 2007. Pre-tested end-to-end system and storage configurations allow customers to easily migrate to Exchange Server 2007 – achieving up to 85% in rack space, power and cooling savings and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) for e-mail by up to 70% over three years.
The Interoperability Center expands Sun’s three-year presence on the Microsoft main campus, focused on testing customer scenarios on Sun systems in the Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center. Microsoft and Sun have collaborated in a number of interoperability areas including: Web services, identity management, thin clients, systems management and Windows Server engineering.
The two companies have also created a basis for tighter interoperability between Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE), the .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows Communication Foundation in Sun’s Web services interoperability technologies (Project Tango). Companies can also evaluate the Sun Fire X4600 server with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 through Sun’s Try and Buy program: http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy/specialdetail.jsp?spid=f17eb968-ce40-48c5-9f63-5deb8e339216. Sun became a Windows Server OEM in September 2007 and is also a founding member of the Microsoft Interoperability Vendor Alliance and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.