Frontier Communications Signs 5-Year Information Services Contract With Sun Microsystems

1 January 1970

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that Frontier Communications, a subsidiary of Citizens Communications Company (NYSE: CZN), has selected Sun as its provider for IT Operations Services. The five-year contract will provide Frontier with mainframe, midrange and storage support services from Sun. The agreement will provide Frontier with efficiencies through a combination of server consolidation, maintenance consolidation and remote monitoring and management services. As a result, Frontier Communications, one of the nation's largest independent communication services providers, is reducing the number of their servers by more than half, and migrating to Sun Fire(TM) servers powered by the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System. By reducing server complexity and assigning IT operations management to Sun Management Services, Frontier can dedicate their resources to providing better customer service while decreasing time-to-market for new services.

"Frontier Communications offers telephone, television and Internet services in 23 states. The company served more than 2.5 million revenue-generating units (RGUs) as of December 31, 2004. RGUs consist of access lines plus high-speed Internet subscribers. Our core business is communications, and to remain competitive, we need a stable yet cost-effective platform on which to run current operations and deploy new services," said Steve Ward, senior vice president and CIO, Frontier. "Sun has consistently provided exceptional advantages to Frontier in terms of technology and support. This agreement will allow us to devote more resources to providing better products and services to our customers. Reducing cost and complexity, increasing performance and providing critical uptime and availability were key drivers in Frontier's decision to partner with Sun," says Ward. "Another important consideration was Sun's agreement to hire a number of Frontier IS employees."

As part of the agreement, Sun is providing a "technology refresh" through Sun Managed Operations, a key component of Sun Management Services, and will take responsibility for Frontier's IS operations. Sun will consolidate servers from HP, IBM and Sun, shrinking the number of systems by nearly 50 percent. Sun will provide state-of-the-art monitoring capabilities, rapid trouble shooting and proactive server management to ensure all of Frontier's systems, applications and processes are operating optimally.

"Through Sun Management Services, we will offer tailored remote monitoring and management services to eliminate the costly and time-consuming, yet critical, process of running a company's IT operations," said Peter Weber, senior vice president, Sun Services. "Frontier will maintain control of its infrastructure, but now employees can focus on more competitive aspects of the business by devoting resources to improving customer service and delivering new, in-demand services to its customers."

For more information about Frontier Communications visit http://www.frontieronline.com or http://www.czn.net.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer"(TM) -- 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 sun.com. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, Sun Fire, Solaris and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Mark Richardson

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

(650) 257-4038

mark.richardson@sun.com

Source: prnewswire

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