The latest tidbits on Sun deals and product news Find out about Sun's Q2 earnings, its 250-MHz CPU upgrade, and how the company will influence every OfficeMax and Gap store you visit

January  1997

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San Francisco, CA -- January 15, 1997 -- Sun Microsystems Inc. today reported that its earnings for the second quarter jumped 41 percent to $178.3 million, or 46 cents, on revenues of $2.082 billion.

A year ago, second quarter earnings were $126 million, or 32 cents per share, on revenues of $1.75 billion.

For the first six months of fiscal 1997, which ended Dec. 29, 1996, earnings were $301.7 million, or 77 cents per share, on revenue of $3.94 billion.

"The UltraSPARC/Solaris/Java story is playing well in enterprises around the world," said CEO Scott McNealy in a statement. "Our servers and power desktop systems are hot...Sun has established itself as the viable, growing, and profitable alternative to the legacy PC and mainframe architectures of the last 20 years."

Sun stock was down slightly .62 cents to $28.25 a share in late trading today.

"Sun's positive second quarter financials reflect a continuing growth trend for the company and the Internet industry," according to Zona Research Inc., a market research firm based in Redwood City, CA. "We believe that this announcement validates Sun users' choice in selecting Sun and reassures them of a continuous flow of new products and capabilities," the firm said in its Quiniela newsletter.

"The continued quarter-to-quarter increases in revenues, net income, and gross margins underscore the apparent ongoing success of Sun's Internet strategy. Overall, when viewed in light of Intel's impressive numbers for the quarter (Intel had profits of $1.9 billion for the same reporting quarter), this announcement confirms the Internet industry is not a zero-sum game, dominated by a single player. Sun has no reason to fear the Dark Side yet," according to Zona.

--Elinor Mills, IDG News Service, San Francisco Bureau

Mountain View, CA -- January 14, 1997 -- Sun is pumping up its UltraSPARC-based Ultra Enterprise servers with a new 250-MHz CPU module. The upgrade will deliver up to a 50 percent performance improvement over the current 167-MHz modules. The new modules are 100 percent binary compatible, so all Solaris 2 applications can run unaltered.

The 250-MHz UltraSPARC CPU modules are priced at $16,000 and are supported in Ultra Enterprise 3000, 4000, 5000, and 6000 servers. Upgrades to the new modules cost $12,000.

Menlo Park, CA -- January 13, 1997 -- Sun Microsystems and OfficeMax Inc., the office product superstore chain, are developing an interactive, in-store kiosk that OfficeMax customers will be able to use to place orders, find product information, and view advertisements. The systems will be powered by SPARC 5 workstations running Solaris.

The kiosk application and user interface are being developed The Allied Group and will use the company's InTOUCH touch-screen technology. Customers will be able to place orders for any of the roughly 20,000 products in the company's catalog.

OfficeMax home page http://www.officemax.com
The Allied Group's InTOUCH kiosk page http://www.tag.com/kiosk.html

New York -- Jan. 13, 1997, STS Systems announced it will offer its point-of-sale software for retailers on Sun Ultra Enterprise servers. The company demonstrated its STS Open MarketWorks, Open AuditWorks, and MMS Open Planning packages at the National Retail Federation conference here. Open MarketWorks is a stand-alone retail database marketing system, while Open AuditWorks is used for sales audit systems. MMS Open Planning is designed to allow merchandising managers, buyers, and planners manage inventory. STS Systems http://www.sts-systems.ca/retail.htm

New York -- January 13, 1997 -- Richter Systems Inc. announced its RAMS 2000 (Retail Automated Merchandising System) now supports Sun's JavaStation network computer. The package, which the company demonstarted at the National Retail Federation show, allows authorized users to access such information as inventory or stock-and-sale data from remote locations.

The package offers enterprise-wide management of inventory, purchasing, loss prevention, sales audit, merchandising decision support, and other retail operations. It features the Oracle7 relational database and Oracle computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools, including Designer/2000 and Developer/2000, and Oracle WebServer technology.

Richter Systems' RAMS 2000 page http://www.richter.net/rsii/rams01.html

San Francisco, CA -- January 13, 1997 -- Gap, the multinational apparel retailer, selected Sun Ultra Enterprise servers to host the company's Web site, as well as other online projects. These projects include:

• A digital asset library of Gap's print ad campaigns, where online images of current and previous advertising images can be stored and retrieved
• An employee help desk application housed on the Ultra Enterprise server
• Approximately 100 Sun workstations are being used by Gap's in-house architectural staff for design of Gap stores.
• Sun servers will be used as the platform for a new retail warehousing and merchandise planning system currently under development.

Gap sells clothing under the names Gap, GapKids, BabyGap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy Clothing Company. The company has more than 1,800 retail outlets. Gap home page http://www.gap.com

Boston -- January 15, 1997 -- Sun and Schumann AG today announced the opening of the Object Reality Center in Cologne, Germany, the first European site for Sun's worldwide Object Reality Program.

The Cologne Object Reality Center's goal is to offer support to developers working with distributed, object-oriented applications using Java, CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) and related Internet and intranet tools, Sun officials said. Special emphasis will be placed on the development of prototypes and pilot projects for the financial services and telecommunications industries, they said.

In Cologne, Schumann will lead the project management and design the system infrastructures, while Sun will provide hardware resources, solve software-specific problems, and supply development guidelines, officials said.

Five other centers have already been opened in the U.S., and other offices are planned for Paris and London, officials said. In addition, there will be a center in Asia, they said.

So far, customers who have used the centers include R.R. Donnelley's Coris Division, which built an interactive Web-based publishing application, and Bank of Boston, which developed a new risk-management system, officials said.

--Rebecca Sykes, IDG News Service, Boston Bureau

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