Sun and AXA Financial Win CMP Media's 2002 RealWare Award for Best Enterprise Portal Application

Solution Based on the Sun(TM) ONE Portal Server Recognized as Best Enterprise Portal Application, Supports AXA Financial's Business-Critical Objectives

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - News) today announced that it received this year's RealWare award for the design and deployment of AXA Financial's portal platform, further underscoring Sun's success in the portal marketplace. A highly competitive field of entries was evaluated for this year's award and presented on June 24, 2002 by CMP Media's Intelligent Enterprise and Transform magazines by the RealWare Award's panel of independent experts, including leading analysts, consultants and editors. Judges for the 'Best Enterprise Portal Application' category, Justin Kestelyn, editor-in-chief, Intelligent Enterprise Magazine, Hadley Reynolds, research director, The Delphi Group and Colin White, president, DataBase Associates, selected the Sun solution over competing solutions including those from Plumtree, ATG and Corechange.

This award is the latest addition to the Sun ONE(TM) Portal Server's significant industry recognition and adoption -- ranked #1 in portal marketshare by The Radicati Group ("Enterprise Portals Market Trends 2002-2006") for three consecutive years, positioned in the leader quadrant in Gartner's Portal Product Magic Quadrant ("Big Change Evident in 2H02 Horizontal Portal Product MQ," May, 2002) for two consecutive years with more than 400 customers worldwide. According to Gartner, leaders are vendors who are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.

"Companies such as Sun and AXA Financial demonstrate the impact of IT excellence resulting in significant business benefits," said David Stodder, editorial director for Intelligent Enterprise Magazine. "The RealWare winners are transforming business and enabling the intelligent enterprise."

To gain a competitive advantage, AXA Financial designed, implemented and deployed a portal infrastructure based on the Sun ONE Portal Server to cost effectively deliver the differentiating services that its customers, employees and business partners needed. AXA Financial initiated its multiportal initiative in 1999 to expand and enhance the relationships between its sales associates and their clients.

In January 2001 AXA launched AXAonline.com, a Website powered by the Sun ONE Portal Server. Targeted to clients and potential clients, the portal enables AXA Financial to deliver real-time stock quotes to site visitors, allows existing clients to access account information and third-party news feeds, and provides access to a learning library stocked with financial tools and resources. Clients can view their portfolios online and perform transactions in a secure environment, access information related to financial, retirement, and estate planning; college funding; asset allocation; annuities; life insurance and mutual funds; general securities; and managed money programs. The first portal also targets AXA Advisors, LLC, the retail sales force of financial professionals that provide financial services to their clients.

Second Portal Deployed within Seven Weeks
With the success of AXAonline.com, AXA Financial realized that another portal would be ideal for AXA Distributors, its wholesale distribution channel. By repurposing 25 percent of the content of the first portal, AXA was able to reduce the deployment time of the second portal by 60 percent (seven weeks versus the five months it took to deploy the first portal). AXA Financial was then able to devote the bulk of its time to developing the remaining 75 percent of the portal's content. The AXAdistributors.com portal was launched in August 2001 and is currently being rolled out to a wider community.

"We are committed to providing our customers with real business benefits -- such as higher ROI and lower total cost of ownership -- such as those derived from AXA Financial's multi-portal initiative," said Anil Gadre, vice president, software marketing and business operations for Sun Microsystems, Inc. "AXA Financial was able to standardize the templates it created for its first portal and move content to successive portals easily, a key benefit of leveraging a portal platform."

AXA Financial chose the Sun ONE Portal Server as its front-end because of three differentiating factors: high reusability, smooth integration with existing applications, and the reliability of Sun's service and support network. AXA Financial's Sun solution includes the Sun ONE(TM) Directory Server, the Sun ONE Portal Server and the Sun ONE(TM) Web Server in a Solaris(TM) Operating Environment.

About the Sun ONE Portal Server
The Sun ONE Portal Server -- the industry's first portal platform for building B2E, B2B and B2C portals -- enables the personalized delivery of content, services, business processes and applications for enterprises competing in today's competitive environment. It is a key component of the Sun(TM) Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) offering -- an open, integratable product portfolio to enable the development and delivery of services on demand. With more than 400 customers worldwide, the Sun ONE Portal Server (formerly iPlanet(TM) Portal Server) has received significant industry recognition -- ranked #1 in portal marketshare by The Radicati Group ("Enterprise Portals Market Trends 2002-2006") for three consecutive years and positioned in the leader quadrant in Gartner's Portal Product Magic Quadrant ("Big Change Evident in 2H02 Horizontal Portal Product MQ," May, 2002) for two consecutive years.

About Sun ONE
Sun ONE, the integration of Sun's award-winning portfolio of software products, is Sun's vision, architecture, platform and expertise that enables the development and delivery of services on demand. Through its open, integrateable architecture, Sun ONE extends current enterprise systems to help reduce costs and complexity while improving organizations' return on assets. Sun ONE represents a significant initiative in Sun's evolution to providing an open end-to-end architecture building on the company's offerings across systems and development environments. Further information is available at www.sun.com/sunone.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer(TM)" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

About CMP Media, LLC
CMP Media LLC (www.cmp.com) is a leading high-tech media company providing essential information and marketing services to the entire technology spectrum the builders, sellers and users of technology worldwide. Its diverse products and services include newspapers, magazines, Internet products, research, direct marketing services, education and training, trade shows and conferences, custom publishing, testing and consulting. Intelligent Enterprise (www.IntelligentEnterprise.com) is the only IT publication focused exclusively on planning and deploying strategic business applications that turn information into intelligence. Transform (www.transformmag.com) is a print and online publication read by business leaders and IT managers implementing content and collaboration products and strategies.

NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, iPlanet and The Network is the Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries.

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted May 2001 and May 2002 by Gartner Inc., Inc. and is reused with permission. Gartner Inc.'s permission to print or reference its Magic Quadrant should not be deemed to be an endorsement of any company or product depicted in the quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is Gartner Inc.'s opinion and is an analytical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It measures vendors against Gartner Inc. -- defined criteria for a marketplace. The positioning of vendors within a Magic Quadrant is based on the complex interplay of many factors. Gartner Inc. does not advise enterprises to select only those firms in the Leaders segment. In some situations, firms in the Visionary, Challenger, or Niche Player segments may be the right match for an enterprise's requirements. Well-informed vendor selection decisions should rely on more than a Magic Quadrant. Gartner, Inc. research is intended to be one of many information sources including other published information and direct analyst interaction. Gartner Inc. expressly disclaims all warranties, express or implied of fitness of this research for a particular purpose.