Sun to Bolster Identity Management Leadership and Service Offerings With Acquisition of Neogent

September 28, 2006; 03:17 AM
SANTA CLARA, Calif. AUSTIN, Texas - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) and Neogent, Inc. announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which Sun will acquire Neogent, an identity management services automation company based in Austin, Texas.

The combination of Sun's market-leading identity management solutions with Neogent's deployment automation toolset will help Sun enterprise customers dramatically improve identity management implementation times while reducing implementation costs, as well as better address compliance requirements for regulatory, security and privacy issues such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Affordability Act (HIPAA), Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

Sun is recognized as a global leader in identity management and billions of user identities worldwide are managed by Sun identity management products. Recently, Sun was positioned by Gartner in the "Leaders" quadrant of the 1H06 User Provisioning Magic Quadrant report. Gartner places companies in the "Leaders" quadrant based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute.

The acquisition of Neogent will allow Sun to extend its leadership position across the identity management platform and improve its ability to offer customers fixed-price and packaged identity management offerings that are repeatable and predictable with significantly reduced deployment time. In addition, Sun partners will be able to leverage Neogent deployment technologies and service expertise.

"Acquiring Neogent will expand Sun's resources and talent for architecture and project oversight in the rapidly growing identity business. Customers and partners will see dramatically increased speed and accuracy in the deployment of identity services on the Solaris OS and other popular operating systems, leading to a faster return on their software investment," said Peter Weber, senior vice president, Services Group, Sun Microsystems. "With Neogent's innovative deployment methodologies, identity projects which could have taken customers over a year may now be completed in as little as 45 days, giving Sun a significant advantage over the competition."

As service and delivery experts in identity and access management solutions, Neogent leverages Sun's market-leading identity management software to help organizations streamline operations, reduce administrative costs, and address security and compliance requirements related to regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA.

Based on years of experience with the Sun Java Systems Identity Management Suite, Neogent developed its Velocity Identity Package (VIP) to reduce deployment time, ultimately providing customers with a scalable, cost effective solution. Implementations from other identity management vendors often take over a year, but with Neogent's VIP, customers may complete their projects in as little as 45 days. This announcement further underscores Sun's leadership in identity management. The recently updated VIP product is believed to be the first to combine user provisioning with identity auditing, bridging the gap between IT security and auditors internally and externally, to stay in compliance with critical wide-ranging local, state and federal regulations.

"We are proud of our longtime partnership with Sun and are very excited that Sun has chosen Neogent to expand its industry leading identity software capabilities," said Bruce Douglas, chief executive officer, Neogent. "Neogent's Velocity Identity Package (VIP) toolset is based on repeatable process automation methodologies and is the perfect packaged implementation service to complement Sun's identity portfolio."

This announcement comes on the heels of recent momentum in Sun Identity Management, including the release of Sun Java System Identity Manager 7.0, and an agreement with Accenture to jointly develop Identity-enabled Service-Oriented Architecture and composite applications as well as create the Accenture Innovation Center for Sun Solutions, which was announced on September 13, 2006 (http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2006-09/sunflash.20060913.5.xml).

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of Sun's 2007 fiscal year. The terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is immaterial to Sun's earnings per share.

About Neogent Inc.

Neogent helps mid-to-large sized enterprise organizations and institutions implement Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions for their businesses. Our goal is to help our customers improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs, and adhere to compliance mandates. We've proven success since 1999 throughout all industries. Our years of bringing customers return on their technology investment has also inspired what we call our Velocity Lab, where accelerator packages are created to help customers benefit from fixed price implementations that are proven to dramatically decrease implementation time and reduce the overall delivery cost. We are also known globally for sharing our IAM knowledge by offering technical and sales training for our partners, and customers. For more information about Neogent, visit www.neogent.com.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.