Ranked in the Top 20 for Corporate Responsibility Excellence in Several Key Areas

SANTA CLARA, CA - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA), today announced that it has achieved the ranking of 19 on CRO (Corporate Responsibility Officer) Magazine's 2008 100 Best Corporate Citizens list. Sun is recognized for its commitment to transparency and its philosophy of "Innovate, Act, Share," as well as the company's continued practice of openness through innovation while driving economic and social progress worldwide.

"Sun CSR initiatives are creating a positive change and to be recognized as a "100 Best Corporate Citizen" is a true honor," said Marcy Scott Lynn, CSR Manager, Sun Microsystems. " By infusing CSR into our core business objectives, we create industry leading programs that positively impact global communities and the environment. We stay committed to bringing corporate responsibility into everything we do while meeting the needs of our stakeholders, customers, employees, investors, partners and global community."

CRO Magazine contracted with IW Financial, a Portland, Maine-based research firm specializing in environmental, social and governance issues, to analyze the citizenship efforts of large-cap, publicly traded companies. Using a standardized process, IW Financial evaluated Russell 1000 companies only, in eight categories: Environment, Climate Change, Human Rights, Employee Relations, Governance, Philanthropy, Financial and Lobbying. Since the goal is a comparative determination of "best," IW Financial ranked the companies in each category. CRO determined the final ranking as a weighted average of the eight categories. In addition, CRO did a final review to eliminate those companies which had been involved in a recent (during the past three years) major public scandal (involving a government or regulator-imposed fine, admission of guilt, conviction or other comparable infraction). Furthermore, CRO required that the data used in rankings be only from publicly available sources on the theory that transparency is a basic principle of the Corporate Responsibility profession.

"Some companies have good environmental policies," says Mark Bateman, IW Financial's Director of Research. "Some companies have great employee relations. Some companies have exemplary human rights records. CRO's 100 Best Corporate Citizens list answers the question: Which companies do best across a wide variety of citizenship issues? Companies can't make it onto the list if they do poorly in too many categories."