Sweden's Largest Student Database to be Powered by MySQL Enterprise

Stockholm, Sweden –- December 17, 2008 –- Sun Microsystems today announced that Ladok, Sweden's largest university database will be migrated to MySQL™, the world’s most popular open source database. Five million people are registered in the Ladok system, a national system used for the documentation of academic information. University administrators as well as more than 350,000 active students use information from the Ladok-system on a regular basis in order to manage follow–up procedures, track academic results or look up grades.

The Ladok system cannot suffer downtime. The enormous amount of information concerning academic results, registrations and documentation for almost every individual university student in Sweden is important for the Swedish National Board of Student Aid, the statistical data of Statistics Sweden, and the Ministry of Education and Research.

For the past 20 years, the Ladok division's operations have been based on a proprietary database but will now be fully migrated to and supported by MySQL Enterprise™. The transition will take place gradually throughout 2009.

"Open source software and open development is appealing to universities, in addition to enabling a reduction in costs," said Sören Berglund, head of the Ladok division in Umeå. "Our evaluations have shown that the functionality of MySQL is very good. In combination with the substantially lower costs of the software and support compared to proprietary databases, this major decision was relatively easy to make."

"MySQL is widely deployed within academic institutions, and Ladok's choice is a strong testament to the attractiveness of our offering for universities and colleges," said Magnus Stenberg, MySQL Sales Manager for the Nordics and Benelux at Sun Microsystems. "We are delighted to provide academic institutions with a simpler and lower costs solution that helps them better achieve their mandates."

The management of the Ladok system is divided between three large data centers in Uppsala, Lund and Umeå. By subscribing to Sun's MySQL Enterprise offering, the universities using Ladok can control the performance and security of the entire database through the MySQL Enterprise Monitor, and help ensure high performance of the application thanks to the newly released MySQL Query Analyzer.

"MySQL Enterprise provides all the tools and services we need, including around-the-clock support," said Sören Berglund.

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/.