Sun Doubles Down on Rapidly Evolving Media and Entertainment Market

Sun Doubles Down on Rapidly Evolving Media and Entertainment Market

New Leadership; Luminary John Gage Discusses Importance of Access to On-Demand Solutions at NAB Conference

LAS VEGAS - NAB Conference, April 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) announces today it is reinforcing its commitment to the media and entertainment market with a new vertical group that will create technology solutions to meet Hollywood's insatiable appetite for reliable, fast, and open technology. Sun is already delivering the Digital Asset Management Reference Architecture, video management and storage products to leaders like Home Box Office (HBO), WGBH and Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM). While at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference (NAB) John Gage, chief researcher at Sun, discussed the latest technologies defining the industry at a radio keynote entitled "Digital Ubiquity and Community: How Universal Access Changes our Lives."

Gage Stresses the Importance of Digital Distribution

Gage spoke about what the industry, as a whole, will gain from the complete transition to a ubiquitous digital market. He explained how technology is critical to making different types of media more available to a wider audience of users. The convergence of technologies, combined with the choice and control for the consumer, will increasingly place a larger onus on the service provider to track usage and content authorization rights for each user and device on their network.

Sun Shines with New Team to Tackle an Evolving Industry

To oversee this reinvigorated industry focus, Sun has appointed Sun Labs head Glenn Edens to the post of senior vice president of broadband, media and entertainment industry. Edens has an extensive background as a Sun Labs researcher, entrepreneur, corporate strategist and consultant in telco and computer design. He joins other industry leaders including Sun eight-year veteran Juan Dewar, now appointed new vice president of media and entertainment, bringing a deep understanding of the Java(TM) technology handheld market from his former post leading the Java technology mobility group for Sun. Sun also brought in Andy Sheldon, who was recently responsible for the applications and services initiatives at Microsoft TV and was senior director of product marketing at MSN TV. Lastly, Darrel Jordan-Smith is newly appointed vice president of the global telecommunications to continue driving innovation across the broadband and telecommunications market.

Sun's research and development plans to focus on the transition to digital distribution, the introduction of disk-based archives, and the emergence of new distribution channels such as that offered by telecommunications companies for IPTV, which is a common denominator for systems where television and/or video signals are distributed to subscribers using Internet protocols. The FCC mandate to digitize the broadcast space in the US has created a tremendous demand for strong tech leaders that will help enable the transition from an analog to digital workflow according to analyst group Frost and Sullivan.

"Sun is dedicated to finding the strongest leaders to drive our vertical market strategy," explains Clark Masters, executive vice president industry solutions for Sun Microsystems. "Our focus on media and entertainment spans from content creation and media management to distribution. Almost all of the major studios today manage their digital assets on Sun, which speaks volumes of the confidence they already have in Sun's expertise. These new appointments will cement our future leadership in this space."

Sun has enjoyed successes with mainstream cable programming channels like Home Box Office (HBO), providing the tapeless archive infrastructure that feeds HBO's 16 premium cable channels today. Emerging content providers such as Major League Baseball Advanced Media employ Sun technology for everything from content acquisition and media asset management to IP-based distribution. Broadcasters have amassed enormous libraries of valuable content that resides on tape in their vaults. The introduction of open standards server technologies combined with dramatically lower prices for hard disk drive storage enable content owners like WGBH, the PBS affiliate that produces a significant amount original programming, to make their archives commercially available and realize new revenue streams from their content through systems powered by Sun.

The next-generation cell phones and PDAs will offer the user an ability to watch video content away from home. This provides more choice and control for the consumer and places more onus on the service provider to track usage and content authorization rights for each user and device on their network, says Dewar. Sun's identity management solutions are well positioned for the company to provide these technologies to their service provider and network equipment provider customers across devices. Sun's continued commitment to embedded Java technology in devices has the potential to pay off now that the US cable industry plans to roll out OCAP-enabled set top boxes and support cable card ready consumer electronics such as digital TVs. Further commitment to MHP in Europe and Asia helps to solidify standards for set top boxes in this markets.

Sun and Media and Entertainment

The media and entertainment industry, which includes broadcasters, moviemakers, cable and satellite companies, publishers, gaming, the music business, and sports spends approximately $25 billion annually on information technology as a competitive weapon.

The industry worries about lowering operating and capital expenses, complying with new government regulations, digitizing their content, managing digital rights, network identity and creating new online services. Sun addresses the pain points around the evolution of the industry by focusing on solutions involving identity management, enterprise consolidation, mainframe migration, regulatory compliance and content management. Sun delivers scalable and reliable systems as well as platform-independent Java technologies to this key market for Sun.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer(TM)" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com/ .

Copyright(C) 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, Java, iForce and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Aaron Cohen Sun Microsystems, Inc. (415) 294-4207 aaron.cohen@sun.com

Leslie Llewellyn Alexander Ogilvy Worldwide for Sun Microsystems, Inc. (415) 677-2733 leslie.llewellyn@ogilvypr.comhttp://sun.com/news

Source: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

CONTACT: Aaron Cohen of Sun Microsystems, Inc., +1-415-294-4207 or aaron.cohen@sun.com; Leslie Llewellyn of Alexander Ogilvy Worldwide, +1-415-677-2733 or leslie.llewellyn@ogilvypr.com, for Sun Microsystems, Inc.; or http://sun.com/news

Web site: http://sun.com/

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