Food Service Network Picks Sun ONE

Sun Microsystems Inc. on Tuesday announced that EFS Network Inc. is using the Sun Open Network Environment (Sun ONE) as the foundation for a supply chain solution aimed at reducing costs and inefficiencies for the food service industry.

Chicago-based EFS Network has placed its supply chain solution on Sun ONE, employing a suite of business network applications from Model N Inc., in South San Francisco, Calif. Model Ns software enables bricks-and-mortar companies to integrate disparate business processes, said CEO Zack Rinat.

EFS Network, which was founded by leading food service companies like Cargill Inc., Sysco Corp., Tyson Foods Inc. and McDonalds Corp., represents more than 20 percent of the $411 billion foodservice industry, the company said. Sun and EFS officials said they expect the Sun ONE-based solution to cut more than $14 billion in inefficiencies in the industrys ordering, processing and other supply-chain systems.

"With the current economic environment, they have to optimize internal processes," said Mike McNerney, group manager for Sun ONE ebusiness market segment at Sun, in Palo Alto, Calif.

The EFS Network was built in about four months, Rinat said. The implementation uses Sun Solaris Operating Environment for Unix Servers, the iPlanet Application Server, the iPlanet Web Server and the Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform, and it runs on Sun servers.