To make a move on Microsoft’s
industry-leading Windows, Sun Microsystems
Inc. reduced prices on its popular Sun Enterprise 250 workgroup server
by nearly half of its orginal cost.
For $4,995 or $125 per month lease, clients can get a Sun (SUNW)
Enterprise 250 server with one processor, 256MB of memory, 18GB of disk and
the Solaris operating environment with unlimited licenses. By comparison, a
similarly configured PC server from Compaq
Computer Corp. (CPQ) — the ML350 running Windows 2000 with unlimited client licenses is more than 30
percent more expensive.
The Sun Enterprise 250 server is the same class of system included in META
Group’s recent ERP platform-related analysis total cost of
ownership study. The report found that platform related implementation costs
associated with midtier ERP solutions in small organizations are three times
as high for Windows NT based deployments when compared to Solaris.
“The robustness of our systems — specifically their ability to deliver
superior reliability over competitive systems based on PC technologies has
been a key element in that success,” said John Davis, director of marketing
for Sun’s workgroup servers. “We expect this price reduction to help us
continue to grow our marketshare.”