Sun and IFS Strengthen Global Strategic Alliance

Business Wire, Sept 23, 2002

Business Editors

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 23, 2002

Building on a history of success, Sun Microsystems Inc. and IFS today announced a comprehensive global strategic alliance to further expand their worldwide sales, marketing, support as well as collaborative engineering activities related to the Java(TM) 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE(TM)) platform.

The two companies are teaming up to help customers achieve step-by-step, cost-effective evolution to the extended enterprise. Built from the ground up on open standards, the joint offering is based on the Sun(TM) Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) for scalability, availability and seamless integration.

This alliance greatly expands the long-standing relationship the two companies have developed over the years, which has led to over a hundred joint customers in various industries such as aviation, defense, utilities and manufacturing. Joint Sun and IFS customers include GE Engine Services, BAE SYSTEMS and Modus Media International.

"Our customers are always looking for ways to improve cost-efficiencies and productivity," said Stuart Wells, vice president, Sun Microsystems Inc. "Sun's strategy of delivering services on demand via Sun ONE products, with its interoperability and ease of integration, combined with IFS' breakthrough open, component architecture and comprehensive support for J2EE-based portals and Web Services, will allow our joint customers to be more responsive and competitive in the marketplace, maximize their agility and, ultimately, increase bottom-line results."

An important foundation for the alliance is deeper technology collaboration. Sun and IFS have committed design and technical resources for optimizing the use of next-generation J2EE platform functionality in IFS applications. IFS chose to standardize on the Sun ONE Studio integrated development environment for Java developers. Furthermore, IFS software will be optimized on the Sun ONE Application server for scalability and robustness, and the solution will include the award-winning Sun ONE Portal Server for secure e-business portal integration and Sun ONE Directory server for improved security and protection of key corporate information assets. As a result, customers can capitalize on a highly scalable, integratable and secure business solution that can be rapidly configured to address short-term business needs while laying foundation for next generation distributed computing models, such as Web services.

"One of the most important principles behind the Sun and IFS solution is giving customers choice and simplicity to meet accelerated time-to-market needs while leveraging their current investments," said Michael Hallen, president of IFS R&D. "With open standards like XML and J2EE, we can ensure that the various elements of our solution integrate easily into a company's existing infrastructure, thereby shortening implementation time, lowering costs and increasing return on investments. Since IFS architecture is J2EE-compatible, mutual customers such as GE Engine Services and BAE SYSTEMS will soon be experiencing the flexibility, cost savings and robustness associated with this technology. The cooperation with Sun will allow us to fully leverage next-generation J2EE and Sun ONE technology in areas such as Web services and portals."

"We are very excited about this tighter technology cooperation between IFS and Sun," said Bert van den Hoeven, CTO of Modus Media International. "We have been successfully using IFS Applications on Sun across the globe in more than 20 sites, for almost five years now. And as Modus Media is now also endorsing XML, J2EE and Sun ONE technologies, this announcement is a tremendous opportunity for us to further capitalize on both companies' expertise and further tighten the integration between our portals, B2B messaging, core ERP and supply chain applications."

IFS is participating in two important Sun-led programs, the SunTone(SM) and the iForce(SM) Initiatives. Joining the iForce community, IFS will work with Sun, system integrators and customers to deliver an end-to-end, best-in-class and easy-to-deploy solution that will help customers solve business problems, decrease implementation risk and accelerate time-to-service. IFS Applications will be available in Sun's iForce Ready Centers for both companies to collaborate on proof-of-concept demonstrations and legacy integration.

Certification under the SunTone program is granted to companies whose solutions have demonstrated best practices in the areas of infrastructure, operations, hardware, software, storage, security and overall service delivery to ensure a high level of availability, scalability and security.

About Sun ONE

Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) is Sun's vision, architecture, platform and expertise that enable the development and delivery of services on demand. Through its open, integratable architecture, Sun ONE extends current enterprise systems to help reduce costs and complexity while improving organizations' return on assets. Further information is available at www.sun.com/sunone.>