Santa Clara, California - (The Hosting News) - December 11, 2007 - Technology firm and web hosting provider, Sun Microsystems, Inc., has debuted the launch of a Partner Growth Fund, which is creating a significant pool of money for the members of the Sun Partner Advantage Program, Sun's global partner program.
The new program is hoped to allow Sun's network of global partners with rapid and easy access to the most current Sun technology innovations and solutions, enabling partners to expand opportunities for revenue growth.
Don Grantham, Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Services at Sun Microsystems, Inc. remarked, ''Our partners have told us that Sun's superior technology provides them with a competitive advantage. With the creation of a Partner Growth Fund, Sun shows once again that we've taken their council by giving them easier and wider access to Sun technology. Our Partners lead the way by selling value into existing accounts and capturing new customers. With this new Partner Growth Fund, our partners are better equipped than ever to compete in the technology marketplace and drive more revenue.''
The investment will take two forms: first, the Partner Growth Fund will become a sustaining program within the Partner Advantage Program. Depending on membership level, partners will earn dollars every month based on their revenue performance to purchase equipment that can be used for in-house demonstration centers, customer facing demo systems or even systems for application proof-of-concepts. In addition, Sun will begin shipping some no-cost seed units of our newest technology systems like Sun Blade servers, the Sun Fire x4500 and Opteron servers to Executive level Partner Advantage Program Resellers, Global Systems Integrators and many of our ISVs starting in September. This initial investment will jumpstart partner participation prior to them accruing dollars to spend from the Partner Growth Fund.
In July 2007, Sun announced the completion of the global Sun Partner Advantage Program roll-out, Sun's enhanced worldwide partner program that provides a consistent global framework for all partners. This new Partner Growth Fund will be available to partners via the Sun Partner Advantage Program. Eligible partners will have flexible access to all of Sun's hardware and software including the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). The Partner Growth Fund will augment existing programs like the Go-To-Market Program that provides demand generation marketing dollars and training dollars to Sun's Partners. The Partner Growth Fund rounds out these other programs to significantly improve the partner business proposition.
Mike Thompson, President and CEO of Groupware Technology, Inc. added, ''As a reseller, it's business-critical that we have access to the newest and most cutting-edge technology that our own customers are searching for. We recognize Sun as having the best technology in the world and with the availability of Sun's new fund and the unprecedented technology access it will provide us with, we are confident that we will enhance our value proposition to the market place and impact the bottom line. We look forward to working hand-in-hand with Sun to open doors to revenue opportunities even wider than before.''
Sun began offering web hosting services, based upon the Solaris 10 Operating System, and Sun systems and storage, through a partnership with Joyent and NaviSite. The offer is available for eligible U.S. based members of the Sun Startup Essentials program, designed to help early-stage companies get to market more quickly on Sun's enterprise- class technologies at a cost that fits their needs to conserve cash.
The hosting requirements of Web 2.0 and Internet Services startups typically differ from those of traditionally established companies, due to their increased need to grow and expand services with fluctuating customer demands. Sun is working closely with Joyent and NaviSite to help address these requirements and is now able to offer these emerging companies all the advantages of the extremely flexible and scalable Solaris 10 OS based infrastructure.
Joyent and NaviSite are using Solaris Container virtualization technology, part of the Solaris 10 OS, the most advanced OS on the planet, to deliver the secure and high-performance infrastructure to help deploy next-generation web applications that can scale based on demand. Sun's partners also provide value-add services to manage and monitor their hosted environments. With highly flexible hosting offerings, customers can choose to start with a small capacity and grow flexibly as their business and community grows.
The Sun Startup Essentials program is designed to help eligible U.S. based startup companies get to market faster while conserving cash. The program offers its members a range of discounted Sun products and services, including its award-winning Sun Fire x64 servers and Sun Fire servers with CoolThreads technology, and Sun's select StorageTek line of products, including modular disk arrays, NAS and tape storage products.
In addition to offering products and services to eligible U.S. based members, Sun also is offering free technical advice via email and access to free software such as Apache, MySQL and Perl (AMP) optimized to run on the Solaris 10 OS. As of today, program members can also select the Web hosting infrastructure from Sun partners based on Sun technologies along with services they need, in case they choose not to build and operate the infrastructure themselves. Sun develops technologies designed to power comprehensive markets, in more than 100 countries.
To learn more about Sun's web hosting program, please visit: www.sun.com/startupessentials.
For more information about Sun, please visit: http://sun.com.
