Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced two new milestones in their ongoing alliance: the official opening of the Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center on Microsoft's Redmond campus for optimizing Microsoft applications on Sun Fire x64 server systems storage, and the availability of the Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. More information on the Sun Infrastructure Solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is available here.

"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 will help our joint customers achieve outstanding performance results for their standardized and homegrown solutions. It is consistent with our recently announced interoperability principles, which guide steps that we are taking 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 e-mail 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. In addition, the center will collaborate with authorized Sun Solution Centers to support customers in running their own proof-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 the following:

• 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 Server 2008 Hyper-V and Sun xVM
• Cross-company collaboration to allow Sun Ray thin client software to provide a first-rate virtual desktop for the Windows environment and support 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-date system and storage configurations allow customers to easily migrate to Exchange Server 2007 - achieving up to 85 percent savings in rack space, power and cooling, and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) for e-mail by up to 70 percent over three years.

The Interoperability Center expands Sun's three-year presence on the Microsoft main campus, focused on testing customer scenarios on Sun's 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 Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows Communication Foundation in Sun's Web services interoperability technologies (Project Tango). Corporations can also evaluate the Sun Fire X4600 server with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 through Sun's Try and Buy program: 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 Interop Vendor Alliance and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.