Sun Microsystems Inc accompanied launch of its new baby Sparcstation SLC workstation last week (CI No 1,426) with two major new programs, Database Excelerator and Sparcserver Manager. Excelerator is claimed to increase database transaction throughput on the Sparcserver line running Ingres, Oracle, Informix or Sybase by up to 50%, while the Manager provides disk mirroring and system administration tools for network management. Excelerator is UKP900 on the Sparcserver 1+, and UKP4,500 on all other Sparcservers, and is out in August. Sparcserver Manager is UKP6,700, from July. And Sun wants to make Compact Disk-Read Only Memory the preferred method for receiving Sun software by 1991, and to that end has cut the price of the SunCD drive by 30% to $1,000 in the US, where it is also offering a free copy of SunOS 4.1 to SunCD buyers until August 31. At the UK launch in London, John Coon, Sun UK marketing programmes manager said that a native implementation of Unix System V.4 will not be available on the company’s range of workstations and servers until September next year. Although Sun is increasingly looking toward low cost system configurations to provide its volume business, UK vice-president Bill Passmore said, in a veiled reference to the Sparcstation 2 series that is expected towards the end of the summer, that the company is not giving up on the performance race.
