Sweden's Largest News Group Bets on MySQL Enterprise

Stockholm, Sweden -– December 15, 2008 -– Sun Microsystems today announced that Aftonbladet is now running the majority of its business on MySQL Enterprise™.

Aftonbladet is the largest daily newspaper in the Nordic region, with about 1,209,000 readers a day, and Aftonbladet.se is the largest online news site in the region with approximately 4.2 million unique visitors per week.

Back in 2004, Aftonbladet selected MySQL™ as the database standard for the management of its entire news group. Since then, Aftonbladet has gradually gone from proprietary software to MySQL, and the company's most business-critical systems including Aftonbladet.se, the intranet applications and the editorial publishing tool, are now all supported by a subscription to Sun’s MySQL Enterprise offering.

"Our most business critical processes are today based on MySQL, and in my opinion the security and performance are just as good, if not better, compared with proprietary software," said Oscar Edholm, CIO at Aftonbladet. "The functionality is equal, and there are more possibilities to adapt the products to our needs. In addition, the price-performance ratio is much better in comparison with proprietary software. I can only see benefits in using open source software, and our strategy is to move over to open source and MySQL step-by-step."

Today, Aftonbladet.se and its additional services such as blogs and paid services have been migrated from Oracle to MySQL. Furthermore, the editorial platform NewsPilot, which represents the very heart of the editorial work, the intranet with about 130 applications as well as the web publishing tool Escenic are all based on MySQL Enterprise.

"Aftonbladet.se has approximately 4.2 million unique visitors a week, and therefore the reliability of our database management system is extremely important," said Peter Frey, IT Manager at Aftonbladet Nya Medier. "Our experience is that the reliability and uptime are just as high today compared with the proprietary database we had earlier, and nowadays we implement MySQL on all the new online services where it’s possible. Since those are mission critical applications, we have chosen to subscribe to MySQL Enterprise, which we consider to be an extra life insurance in case our developers should require help and support."

The database administrators at Aftonbladet have total control over the network performance, security and risk factors through the MySQL Enterprise Monitor, MySQL's monitoring tool which is part of the MySQL Enterprise subscription. MySQL Enterprise also includes the recently launched Query Analyzer that helps improve performance by accurately pinpointing SQL code that is causing a slow down.

"We're delighted to see the entire Aftonbladet news site running today on MySQL Enterprise," said Magnus Stenberg, MySQL Sales Manager for the Nordics and Benelux at Sun Microsystems. "MySQL Enterprise enables companies to cut costs by 90-percent compared to proprietary databases, while providing them access to tools and services to help ensure the highest levels of performance, reliability and uptime."

About Sun's MySQL Database

MySQL is the most popular open source database software in the world. Many of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web sites, critical business systems, and commercial software. At www.mysql.com, Sun provides corporate users with premium subscriptions and services, and actively supports the large MySQL open source developer community.

About Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer™" -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com/.

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