---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash State And Local Governments Turning To Workstations SunFLASH Vol 38 #11 February 1992 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sun's State and Local Customers Now Span 46 States MILPITAS, Calif. --February 12, 1992-- Sun Microsystems Federal, Inc., announced today that it is making major inroads into state and local governments, adding more than 40 state and local customers in just the past few months. For example, the City of Colorado Springs Utilities, one of the few municipally owned utilities to manage and provide electric, gas, water and wastewater services under one umbrella, is using Sun SPARC workstations to capture and manipulate all of its geographic data. Other recent customer wins include the Chicago Bureau of Parking, the California Department of Water Resources and the City of Albuquerque's Public Works and Planning Departments. During fiscal year 1991, Sun Federal expanded its customer base from 34 to 46 states and tripled overall sales in the state and local marketplace. Contributing to Sun Federal's rapid growth is the accelerating trend by state and local agencies toward open systems and UNIX(R) workstations and servers. In fact, some states, including Texas and Oregon, are defining guidelines that specify open systems for future procurements. These agencies are finding that they need to inexpensively increase their compute power while accessing familiar applications and protecting their investment in existing systems. "Our close relationships with key system integrators such as Xerox, EDS and Andersen Consulting have fueled Sun Federal's growth in the state and local marketplace," said Charles Berger, president of Sun Federal. "These relationships have given our customers complete computing solutions to meet their specific needs." Many state and local agencies are attracted by the vast price/performance advantages offered by Sun(TM) workstations. For example, the City of Colorado Springs Utilities implemented a Sun client-server solution combined with ARC/INFO geographic information system (GIS) software to deal with environmental and infrastructural changes that would impact the services it offers. When the city's Wastewater department learned that a certain type of piping used throughout the city was deteriorating, it was able to identify and produce a color-coded map showing the location of the faulty piping with a simple computer entry. As a result, maintenance crews could begin replacing the pipes before major leaks occurred, thus saving the city thousands of dollars. In addition to mapping all its facilities, the agency plans to implement Sun solutions for applications such as electric trouble call analysis, gas flow analysis, water main replacement analysis and wastewater repair/replace analysis. The Chicago Bureau of Parking uses a document imaging system based on Sun hardware that scans in and analyzes the 11,000 parking tickets written by the city each day. As a result of automating the ticketing process, the city reclaimed an additional $20 million in revenues from parking tickets during 1991. The California Department of Water Resources has incorporated SPARCstation systems into its existing PC network to calculate flow and salinities in water channels. The distributed processing power available on Sun workstations allows engineers to run complex models within three days instead of the three weeks it used to take. In another example of the productivity improvements possible with Sun workstations, the City of Albuquerque uses SPARCstation systems in its Departments of Public Works and Planning. The systems help develop and maintain the city's infrastructure. During a recent water system upgrade, the city was able to complete functions in 20 minutes that previously took hours. Sun Federal's initial sales to state and local agencies resulted from customer demand for workstation-based mapping and geographic information systems (GIS) applications used for urban development, water resource management and electoral reapportionment. Today, Sun workstations and servers are employed for a variety of applications, such as transportation management, computer aided design and drafting, document management, electronic publishing and office automation. Sun Microsystems Federal, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation, the world's leading supplier of client-server computing solutions, which feature networked workstations and servers that store, process and distribute information. Used for many demanding commercial and technical applications, Sun's products command the largest share of the computer industry's fastest-growing market segment: workstations and servers. Sun Microsystem, Inc., founded in 1982 and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is a multi-billion dollar corporation doing business worldwide. PR contact: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Whitney Greer (415) 336-0598 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For information send mail to info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu, paris.cs.miami.edu, uunet.uu.net, src.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.adelaide.edu.au All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. Please contact your local Sales Representative for details of pricing and product availability in your region. Descriptions of, or references to products or publications within SunFlash does not imply an endorsement of that product or publication by Sun Microsystems. John McLaughlin, SunFlash editor, flash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. (305) 776-7770.