Sun Microsystems (News – Alert) Inc. has announced that Swiss telecommunications carrier Swisscom Mobile has selected Sun Fire T2000 servers running the Solaris 10 Operating System and the Sun Java Identity Management Suite to enable its 1,145 retail stores to connect with the company’s Siebel CRM system from Oracle (News – Alert) and point-of-sale applications.
Swisscom officials say the move will let the stores provision services at the point of sale, making it easier for customers to take advantage of more and better services faster.
According to Christian Kattenbusch, project leader for CRM and identity management at Swisscom Mobile, its Siebel CRM project is “now one of the largest Siebel implementations in the world.” Sun used to play a relatively minor role in all that, supplying large SMP servers to run the Siebel 7 deployment, but Kattenbusch says that recently “Sun’s role has grown steadily,” to the point where he now considers Sun “a key strategic ally.”
The new Sun infrastructure components will further expand the capabilities of the Siebel CRM system, according to Kattenbusch: “For half the price of the old environment, we will get a substantial improvement in scalability and availability,” he said, adding that Swisscom is “extremely impressed” with the performance of the T2000 server and wants to consolidate other machines to the new Sun systems.
The Sun Java Identity Management Suite is helping Swisscom Mobile simplify secure access to the corporate CRM system and POS applications, according to Kattenbusch, since the Sun Java Identity Management Suite’s comprehensive user authentication and single sign-on capabilities allow the retail stores to immediately connect to the company’s CRM and POS applications.
Swisscom officials say it’s working: Since implementing the Sun Java Identity Management Suite, they say, “retail outlets have decreased the cost of a sale and reduced the training requirements of shop staff for each new service launch.” Customer service levels have also increased and — here’s the kicker — can be “easily measured,” they say, with a satisfaction indicator within the Swisscom Mobile shop.
Sun recently announced results for the quarter ended October 1, showing revenues for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 of $3.189 billion, an increase of 17 percent as compared with $2.726 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2006. Computer Systems Products revenues increased 15 percent year over year, the third consecutive quarter of year over year revenue increase.
Net loss for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 on a GAAP basis was $56 million or a net loss of ($0.02) per share, as compared with a net loss of $123 million, or net loss of ($0.04) per share, for the first quarter of fiscal 2006.
The Santa Clara, California-based tech giant has also recently announced completion of a new digital archive storage system for computer generated imagery firm Rhythm & Hues, helping “protect Superman’s secret lair and the studio’s 20 years worth of groundbreaking CGI work,” according to Sun officials.
“With our legacy archive storage system approaching the end of its usable life, we sought out digital archiving,” said Mark Brown, vice president of technology at Rhythm & Hues Studios. Sun worked closely with Rhythm & Hues to build an efficient and cost-effective high-performing digital archive system capable of holding all its precious archives, including its early work on such films as “Babe” and “Titanic” and recent projects such as the creation of the Fortress of Solitude for “Superman Returns.”
Source- http://news.tmcnet.com