At its Network Computing '04Q4 (NC04Q4) launch, Sun Microsystems Inc announced TELUS as its first strategic alliance to broaden the delivery of secure, pay-for-use Grid computing services. Leveraging Sun's wholesale model for standardized Grid services, introduced in September 2004, TELUS will resell Sun's Web-based N1 Grid Computing services starting at $1 CPU/hour (USD), initially targeting financial services and oil and gas industries.

"Sun and TELUS are joining forces to drive the next phase of the computing industry, and its delivery as a true utility service," said Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems Inc. "The Solaris 10 Operating System's robust security, containment and virtualization technologies open opportunities everywhere -- both technical and economic. CIOs around the world should begin benchmarking their internal Grid infrastructures against our announced price of $1 CPU/hour (USD) -- and begin to consider the advantages of moving toward a service-oriented data center, rather than a custom-built Grid. Sun and TELUS can assist organizations across North America in radically reducing expense, complexity and risk."

"Our customers see the high value of accessing compute power by the hour. They want to lower costs, remove complexity and focus on growing their businesses. The Sun N1 Grid Computing pay-for-use service delivers computing power as a utility, like water and electricity," said Tony Geheran, vice president of IT at TELUS Communications. "This dynamic offering fulfills customer needs and delivers on TELUS' The Future is Friendly promise. In simplifying complex business computing, and providing more accessible and flexible options that meet business demands, we believe this new Grid computing service will become a mainstream business requirement over the next few years. TELUS is pleased to be leading the way in the Canadian market in alliance with Sun Microsystems."

TELUS is the first service provider to become a retail business partner with Sun for its pay-for-use Grid computing offering. This is the first step in Sun's strategy to work with retail business partners globally to broaden the delivery of its standardized utility computing capabilities to customers big and small, and in various industries and geographic markets worldwide.

Since September, Sun has already committed more than 6,000 CPUs for early demand from major financial services companies ready to use its service. Sun's first standardized utility computing center will go into full operation by the end of the year in the Washington, D.C., region, and more centers are expected to power-up within months worldwide, including New York, London and Houston, Texas.

TELUS reports that many of its customers have already shown strong interest in its new offering and plans to provide early access trials in January. TELUS expects its Toronto-based compute Grid environment to be in full production by early 2005. The new environment will be based on Sun's standardized platform for Grid computing. Based on Solaris 10, Sun N1 Grid Engine software and Sun's industry-hardened, open Grid Computing Reference Architectures, the backbone of Sun's utility computing environments will be designed to easily scale up to 14,848 compute nodes in each data center.

About Sun Microsystems Inc

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems Inc to its position as a 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/.