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Copyright 2010 by Layer 7 Technologies, Inc. (www.layer7tech.com).

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Layer 7 Internal Use Only

Sun Microsystems is a Fortune 500 vendor of software, systems, services, and

microelectronics that power everything from consumer electronics, to

developer tools to the world's most powerful datacenters. Sun is perhaps most

famous for their network servers that form the core of Internet backbones,

provided the raw iron for much of the .com boom, and are used today by

nearly every sector of society and industry.

Sun runs their business on Oracle, whose ERP, CRM, Financials and eBusiness

suite form the IT backbone for Suns hardware, software and services divisions.

While such an enterprise-strength system has long given Sun the edge they

needed to effectively compete with the biggest names in the marketplace,

Suns strengths have always lain in being the smaller, more agile player.

The OpportunityUp until now, Oracle Financials, Siebel CRM, Oracle Manufacturing and Oracle eBusiness Suite were using a

proprietary messaging system which, while handling more than $9B in revenue, was proving more and more

difficult to change. After upgrading to Oracle 11, the functional modules which supported Suns online Web store

were exposed as Web Services presenting Sun with an opportunity to incorporate them into a flexible, loosely

coupled Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). While rivals touted their SOA initiatives, experimenting with Web

Services (technology for technologys sake) or creating catalogs of orphaned Web Services (commonly referred to

as JABOWS or Just A Bunch Of Web Services), Sun had the foresight to realize that without an effective

governance layer in place SOAs promised business agility would likely remain just that nothing more than a

promise.

Enter Layer 7Sun had done the initial work to identify seventeen key functions within their Oracle

suite of applications that would provide the greatest degree of reuse, and had

exposed them as Web services. Because the project was slated to become core

infrastructure that would evolve with their SOA environment, Sun required a way to

ensure these core services could be properly governed controlled, monitored and

adapted over time.

After evaluating a number of different vendors for a variety of criteria, including

capabilities related to security, message validation, message enrichment, protocol

translation, versioning, monitoring and interoperation with their new common

services framework (based on JCAPS), Sun settled on Layer 7.

They were initially drawn to Layer 7s performance and scalability the ability to

handle high volumes of payloads, and efficiently scale as load and message size was

ramped up and then saw the value in Layer 7s runtime governance framework,

which would provide policy enforcement for security, reliability and compliance

requirements, as well as visibility into performance, quality of service and SLA

conformance for their SOA implementation.

Sun Microsystems by the #s

Founded: 1982

Fiscal Year 2008 Revenues: $13.880

billion

Ranking: #184 on the Fortune 500 (2008)

Employees: 33,556 worldwide

Locations: Sun conducts business in

more than 100 countries around the

globe

Sun Microsystems Case StudyCreating Agile, Secure SOA through Governance

At Sun our IT philosophy is

to leverage the power of

Java, Web services, and the

Internet to enable enterprise

computing in the open

network. Layer 7 allows us to

cost-effectively implement

SOA governance and Web

services security that

advance that vision while

maintaining the flexibility andbusiness responsiveness

that SOA-based solutions

can deliver.

Robert Worrall, CIO, Sun

Microsystems

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Sun Microsystems Case Study

Copyright 2

All other trademarks are

The Solution

Suns online Web store is primarily use

Hosted at an offsite datacenter, the W

Suns Oracle-based ERP system via a ti

the Sun Web store Common Web Platf

flexible solution.

Security posed a significant challenge.

geographically-dispersed business unit

contractor

SOA infrast

different u

use and tra

Layer 7 pro

authentica

generating

compliance and content reporting. Enf

were exceeded was key to ensuring qu

The Results

By using Layer 7 to abstract out AAA s

and instantiate them as centrally admi

requirements, industry/ government r

redeploy each individual service. The r

improvement in business agility. Additi

improving overall security by impleme

Following business acquisitions, comp

But with robust SOA governance in pla

faster by providing the ability to contr

By centralizing AAA

security using Layer 7,

Sun was able to speed

deployment, decrease

maintenance costs and

improve business agility.

10 by Layer 7 Technologies, Inc. (www.layer7tech.com).

the property of their respective owners. Layer 7 Internal Use

d by certified partners, VARs and resellers to order syste

eb store originally connected across the Internet via a se

htly coupled, network-level integration. With Suns mov

orm could now be loosely coupled to the ERP Web servi

uns corporate framework encompasses a number of s

s and partner companies, in addition to the many remot

and distinguished engineers all of whom may require

ructure at one point. Additionally, because the solution

sers and security domains, any security solution must be

nsparent to legitimate users.

vided the ability to govern cross-domain interactions by

ion and fine-grained, service level authorization for thir

log files for all interactions within and between organiza

orcing SLAs by rerouting and throttling when threshold t

ality of service was not impacted.

curity (Authentication, Authorization and Auditing) from

nistered enforceable policy, Sun can accommodate chan

gulations, and Web services standards without needing

sult is a dramatic decrease in maintenance costs with a

onally, by centralizing security, Sun was able to speed d

ting a standard security architecture.

nies typically face a difficult challenge integrating their

ce, both companies can reduce integration costs and rea

l, monitor and adapt a solution to fit both partys requir

nly

ms and parts.

cure VPN system to

e to Web services,

es, offering a more

mi-autonomous,

consultants,

access to the new

ould span so many

reasonably easy to

enforcing client

parties, as well as

tions to facilitate

hroughput values

the Web services

es in corporate

to code, test and

corresponding

ployment while

isparate systems.

lize efficiencies

ements.