Sun Microsystems

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Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational

Multinational corporation

A multinational corporation or transnational corporation is a corporation or enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country....
vendor of computer

Computer

A computer is a machine that manipulates Data according to a list of Code .The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century , although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier....
s, computer components, computer software

Computer software

Computer software, or just software is a general term used to describe a collection of computer programs, Algorithm and Software documentation that perform some tasks on a computer system....
, and information technology

Information technology

Information technology , as defined by the Information Technology Association of America , is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to data conv...
services, founded on February 24, 1982. The company is headquartered

Headquarters

Headquarters denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are concentrated. The corporate headquarters is the entity at the top of a corporation taking full responsibility managing all business activities....
in Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara, California , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in the U.S. state of California....
(part of Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is the South Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, United States. The term originally referred to the region's large number of Integrated circuit innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area; it is now generally used as a metonym for the high-tech s...
), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center

Agnews Developmental Center

Agnews Developmental Center is a psychiatric and medical care facility, now located in San Jose, California.In 1885, the center, originally known as "The Great Asylum for the Insane", was established as a facility for the care of the mentally ill....
.

Products include computer server

Server (computing)

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server....
s and workstation

Workstation

A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems....
s based on its own SPARC

SPARC

SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems....
processor

Central processing unit

A central processing unit is an electronic circuit that can execute computer programs. This broad definition can easily be applied to many early computers that existed long before the term "CPU" ever came into widespread usage....
s as well as AMD

Advanced Micro Devices

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. is an United States multinational corporation semiconductor industry company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops Central processing unit and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets....
's Opteron

Opteron

The Opteron is Advanced Micro Devices's x86 server Central processing unit line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture ....
and Intel's Xeon

Xeon

The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel Corporation's x86 architecture multiprocessing Central processing units ? for dual processor and multi-processor configuration on a single motherboard targeted at non-consumer markets of server and workstation computers, and also at blade servers and embedded systems....
processors; storage

Computer storage

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components, devices, and recording medium that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time....
systems; and, a suite of software products including the Solaris Operating System

Solaris Operating System

Solaris is a Unix-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace and ZFS....
, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management

Identity management

In information systems, identity management is the management of the Digital identity life cycle of entities .Identity management is multidisciplinary covers many dimensions such as:...
applications.

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Encyclopedia

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational

Multinational corporation

A multinational corporation or transnational corporation is a corporation or enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country....
vendor of computer

Computer

Computer software

Information technology

Headquarters

Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara, California , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in the U.S. state of California....
(part of Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Agnews Developmental Center

Server (computing)

Workstation

SPARC

SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems....
processor

Central processing unit

Advanced Micro Devices

Opteron

The Opteron is Advanced Micro Devices's x86 server Central processing unit line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture ....
and Intel's Xeon

Xeon

Computer storage

Solaris Operating System

Identity management

MySQL

MySQL is a relational database management system which has more than 11 million installations. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases....
and NFS.

Sun is a proponent of open systems in general and Unix

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
in particular, and a major contributor to open source

Open source

Hillsboro, Oregon

Linlithgow

Linlithgow is a town and former Royal burgh in West Lothian, Scotland. Those born in Linlithgow are sometimes nicknamed Black Bitches, and the town's coat of arms shows a black bitch dog, chained to an oak tree, which grows on an island....
, Scotland.

History

The initial design for what became Sun's first Unix workstation, the Sun 1, was conceived by Andy Bechtolsheim

Andy Bechtolsheim

Andreas von Bechtolsheim is a computer scientist who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy....
when he was a graduate student at Stanford University

Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
in Palo Alto, California

California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
. He originally designed the SUN workstation

SUN workstation

The original Stanford University Network SUN workstation was designed to be a low cost personal workstation for computer aided logic design work....
for the Stanford University Network

Stanford University Network

Workstation

3M computer

3M was a goal first proposed in the early 1980s Raj Reddy and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University as a minimum specification for academic/technical workstations: at least a megabyte of memory, a megapixel display and a Instructions per second processing power....
: 1 MIPS, 1 Megabyte and 1 Megapixel. It was designed around the Motorola 68000

Motorola 68000

The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit Complex instruction set computer microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor ....
processor with an advanced Memory management unit

Memory management unit

A memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to computer memory requested by the central processing unit ....
(MMU) to support the Unix

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
operating system with virtual memory support. He built the first ones from spare parts obtained from Stanford's Department of Computer Science

Stanford University School of Engineering

Stanford University School of Engineering is one of the schools of Stanford University. The school has had eight dean ; the current is James D. Plummer....
and Silicon Valley supply houses.

On February 12, 1982 Vinod Khosla

Vinod Khosla

Vinod Khosla is a neo-conservative Indian-American venture capitalist. He is an influential personality in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986....
, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy is the Chairman of Sun Microsystems, the computer technology company he co-founded in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim....
, all Stanford graduate students, founded Sun Microsystems. Bill Joy

Bill Joy

William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim and Vaughan Ronald Pratt, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003....
of Berkeley, a primary developer of BSD

Berkeley Software Distribution

Berkeley Software Distribution is the Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995....
, joined soon after and is counted as one of the original founders. The Sun name is derived from the initials of the Stanford University Network

Stanford University Network

The Stanford University network was one of the four original ARPANET nodes. The original node was managed by Stanford Research Institute. As the TCP/IP protocols evolved, a TCP/IP network was built on the main campus, which initially connected the Stanford University computer science department, medical center, and department of electrical...
. Sun was profitable from its first quarter in July 1982.

Sun's initial public offering was in 1986 under the stock symbol SUNW, for Sun Workstations (later Sun Worldwide). The symbol was changed in 2007 to JAVA; Sun stated that the brand awareness

Brand awareness

Brand awareness is a marketing concept that refers to a consumer knowing of a brand's existence; at aggregate level it refers to the proportion of consumers who know of the brand....
associated with its Java platform better represented the company's current strategy.

Sun's logo, which features four interleaved copies

Ambigram

An ambigram, also sometimes known as an inversion, is a graphical figure that spells out one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also in transformation of text....
of the word sun, was designed by professor Vaughan Pratt, also of Stanford University. The initial version of the logo had the sides oriented horizontally and vertically, but it was subsequently redesigned so as to appear to stand on one corner.

The first Sun workstations ran a Version 7 Unix

Version 7 Unix

Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system....
System port by UniSoft

UniSoft

UniSoft Corporation is a former Unix vendor that now works on software for digital television development and broadcast....
on 68000

Motorola 68000

The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit Complex instruction set computer microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor ....
processor-based machines.

The "Bubble" and its aftermath

During the dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The "dot-com bubble" was a economic bubble covering roughly 1995?2001 during which stock markets in Western world saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new quaternary sector of industry and related fields....
, Sun experienced dramatic growth in revenue, profits, share price, and expenses. Some part of this was due to genuine expansion of demand for web-serving cycles, but another part was synthetic, fueled by venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is a type of private equity capital typically provided to early-stage, high-potential, Growth investing companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or mergers and acquisitions of the company....
-funded startups building out large, expensive Sun-centric server presences in the expectation of high traffic levels that never materialized. The share price in particular increased to a level that even the company's executives were hard-pressed to defend. In response to this business growth, Sun expanded aggressively in all areas: head-count, infrastructure, and office space.

The bursting of the bubble in 2001 was the start of a period of poor business performance for Sun. Sales dropped as the growth of online business failed to meet predictions. As online businesses closed and their assets were auctioned off, a large amount of high-end Sun hardware was available very cheaply. Much like Apple

Apple Computer

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer Inc., is an United States multinational corporation which designs and manufactures consumer electronics and software products....
, Sun relied a great deal on hardware

Hardware

Hardware is a general term that refers to the physical cultural artifacts of a technology. It may also mean the physical components of a computer system, in the form of computer hardware....
sales.

Multiple quarters of substantial losses and declining revenues have led to repeated rounds of layoffs, executive departures, and expense-reduction efforts. In December 2001 the share price dropped to the 1998 pre-bubble level of about one hundred dollars or so and then kept going, a rapid fall even by the standards of the high-tech sector at that time. The stock dipped below 10 dollars a year later, one-tenth of its 1990 value, then quickly bounced back to 20, where it has hovered ever since. In mid-2004, Sun ceased manufacturing operations at their Newark, California

Newark, California

Newark is a city in Alameda County, California, California, United States. Newark is an enclave, completely surrounded by the city of Fremont, California....
facility and consolidated all of the company's US-based manufacturing operations to their Hillsboro, Oregon

Hillsboro, Oregon

Hillsboro is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County, Oregon. Lying in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city is home to many hi tech companies such as Intel that comprise what has become known as the Silicon Forest....
facility, as part of continued cost-reduction efforts. In 2006 Sun closed the Newark campus completely and moved 2,300 staff to its other campuses in the area.

Many companies (like E-Trade and Google

Google

Google Inc. is an United States public company, earning revenue from AdWords related to its Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Apps, Orkut, and YouTube services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the Google Search Appliance....
) chose to build Web applications based on large numbers of the less expensive PC-class x86-architecture servers running Linux

Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
, rather than a smaller number of high-end Sun servers. They reported benefits including substantially lower expenses (both acquisition and maintenance) and greater flexibility based on the use of open-source

Open source

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source . Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical Strategy element of their business operations....
software. That trend is slowing and may be reversing, given (1) the throughput and efficiency of Sun's new horizontally-scaled systems (see below) and (2) the fact that both Sun's flagship Solaris operating system and its UltraSPARC T1 processor are now fully open-source.

Higher level telecoms control systems such as NMAS and OSS service predominantly use Sun equipment. This use is due mainly to the company basing its products around a mature and very stable version of the Unix

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
operating system and the support service that Sun provides.

Present focus

In 2004, Sun canceled two major processor projects which emphasized high instruction level parallelism

Instruction level parallelism

Instruction-level parallelism is a measure of how many of the operations in a computer program can be performed simultaneously. Consider the following program:...
and operating frequency. Instead, the company chose to concentrate on processors optimized for multi-threading and multiprocessing

Multiprocessing

Multiprocessing is the use of two or more CPU within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor and/or the ability to allocate tasks between them....
, such as the UltraSPARC T1

UltraSPARC T1

Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor, known until its 14 November 2005 announcement by its development codename "Niagara", is a multithreading, multicore central processing unit....
processor (codenamed "Niagara"). The company also announced a collaboration with Fujitsu

Fujitsu

is a Japanese company specializing in semiconductors, air conditioners, computers , telecommunications, and Service , and is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Tokyo....
to use the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
ese company's processor chips in mid-range and high-end Sun servers. These servers were announced on April 17, 2007 as the M-Series, part of the SPARC Enterprise

SPARC Enterprise

The SPARC Enterprise series is a range of UNIX server computers co-developed by Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu introduced in 2007. They are marketed and sold by Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers under the common brand of SPARC Enterprise, superseding Sun's Sun Fire and Fujitsu's PRIMEPOWER server product lines....
series.

In February 2005, Sun announced the Sun Grid

Sun Grid

Sun Grid is an on-demand grid computing service operated by Sun Microsystems. The Sun Grid Compute Utility at provides access to a substantial computing resource over the Internet for United States dollar1 per CPU-hour....
, a grid computing

Grid computing

Utility computing

Utility computing is the packaging of Computational resource, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility ....
services priced at $1 (US) per CPU/hour for processing and per GB/month for storage. This offering builds upon an existing 3,000-CPU server farm used for internal R&D for over 10 years, of which Sun markets as being able to achieve 97% utilization. In August 2005, the first commercial use of this grid was announced for financial risk simulations which was later launched as its first Software as a Service

Software as a Service

Software as a Service is a model of software deployment where an application is licensed for use as a service provided to customers on demand. On demand licensing and use alleviates the customer's burden of equipping a device with every application....
product.

In January 2005, Sun reported a net profit of $19 million for fiscal 2005 second quarter, for the first time in three years. This was followed by net loss of $9 million on GAAP

Gaap

In demonology, Gaap is a mighty Prince and Great President of Hell, commanding sixty-six legions of demons. He is, according to The Lesser Key of Solomon, the king and prince of the southern region of Hell and Earth, and according to the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum the king of the western region and as mighty as Beleth, but for both he is th...
basis for the third quarter 2005, as reported on April 14, 2005. In January 2007, Sun reported a net GAAP profit of $126 million on revenue of $3.337 billion for its fiscal second quarter. Shortly following that news, it was announced that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) would invest $700 million in the company.

In recent years Sun's engineering work has become international, with substantial groups in Bangalore

Bangalore

Bangalore , officially Bengaluru , is the capital of the Indian States and territories of India of Karnataka. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's List of most populous cities in India and List of most populous metropolitan areas in India....
, Beijing

Beijing

is a metropolis in northern China and the Capital of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the four municipality of China, which are equivalent to province in China's Political divisions of China....
, Dublin

Dublin

Dublin is both the largest city and capital of Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region....
, Grenoble

Grenoble

Grenoble is a city in southeastern France situated at the foot of the Alps where the Drac River joins the Is?re River.Located in the Rh?ne-Alpes regions of France, Grenoble is the capital of the Departments of France of Is?re....
, Hamburg

Hamburg

Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany , and is the Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits. The city is home to approximately 1.8 million people, while the Hamburg metropolitan area has more than 4.3 million inhabitants....
, Prague

Prague

Prague is the Capital and World's largest cities of the Czech Republic. Its official name is Hlavn? mesto Praha, meaning Prague, the Capital City....
, St. Petersburg, Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv-Yafo , usually Tel Aviv, is the List of largest cities and second largest cities by country List of cities in Israel in Israel, with an estimated population of 390,100....
, Tokyo

Tokyo

, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan of Japan and located on the eastern side of the main island Honshu. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the Tokyo City in the eastern part of the prefecture, and total over 8 million people....
, and Trondheim

Trondheim

is a city and Municipalities of Norway in S?r-Tr?ndelag Counties of Norway, Norway. The city of Trondheim was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 ....
.

In 2007–2008, Sun posted revenue of $13.8 billion and has $2 billion in cash. First-quarter 2008 losses were $1.68 billion; revenue fell 7% to $2.99 billion. Sun’s stock lost 80% of its value November 2007 to November 2008, reducing the company’s market value to $3 billion. With falling sales to large corporate clients, Sun announced plans to lay off 5,000 to 6,000 workers, or 15-18% of its work force. It expects to save $700 million to $800 million a year as a result of the moves, while also taking up to $600 million in charges in the next 12 months.

A weekly summary of news about Sun and its products is posted to "System News for Sun Users", now in its 10th year.

Acquisitions

1987 - Trancept Systems, a high performance graphics hardware company
1987 - Centram Systems West, maker of networking software for PCs, Macs and Sun systems
1988 - Folio, Inc., developer of intelligent font scaling technology and the F3
F3 (font format)

F3 is an outline font format created by Folio, Inc. Sun Microsystems acquired Folio in 1988, and included 57 F3 fonts and the F3 interpreter, TypeScaler, in its OpenWindows desktop environment....
font format
1992 - INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation
INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation

INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation was a software company, known for their versions of the Unix operating system.In 1977, ISC was the first commercial Unix vendor, selling IS/1, a Version 6 Unix variant enhanced for office automation which ran on most PDP-11's.....
, from Eastman Kodak Company
1994 - Thinking Machines
Thinking Machines

Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer manufacturer founded in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1982 by W. Daniel Hillis and Sheryl Handler to turn Hillis's doctoral work at MIT on parallel computing architectures into a commercial product called the Connection Machine....
Corporation hardware division
1996 - Lighthouse Design
Lighthouse Design

Lighthouse Design Ltd. was an United States computer software company that operated from 1989 to 1996. Lighthouse developed software for NeXT computers running the NEXTSTEP operating system....
, Ltd.
1996 - Cray Business Systems Division, from Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
1996 - Integrated Micro Products, specializing in fault tolerant servers
1996 - Thinking Machines
Thinking Machines

Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer manufacturer founded in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1982 by W. Daniel Hillis and Sheryl Handler to turn Hillis's doctoral work at MIT on parallel computing architectures into a commercial product called the Connection Machine....
Corporation software division
February 1997 - LongView Technologies, LLC
August 1997 - Diba, a technology supplier for the Information Appliance industry
September 1997 - Chorus Systems, creators of ChorusOS
ChorusOS

ChorusOS is a microkernel real-time operating system designed for embedded systems. Sun Microsystems acquired Chorus Syst?mes, the company which created ChorusOS, in 1997....
November 1997 - Encore Computer
Encore Computer

Encore Computer was an early pioneer in the parallel computing market, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Although offering a number of system designs beginning in 1985, they were never as well known as other companies in this field such as Pyramid Technology, Alliant Computer Systems, and the most similar systems Sequent Computer Systems a...
Corporation's storage business
1998 - RedCape Software
1998 - i-Planet , a small software company that produced the "Pony Espresso" mobile email client—most notable product of this acquisition was the later use of its name (sans hyphen) for the Sun-Netscape software alliance
IPlanet

iPlanet was a product brand that was used jointly by Sun Microsystems and Netscape Communications Corporation when delivering software and services as part of a non-exclusive cross marketing deal that was also known as "A Sun|Netscape Alliance"....
July 1998 - NetDynamics - developers of the NetDynamics Application Server
NetDynamics Application Server

NetDynamics Application Server was the first Java-based integrated application server. The product was developed by NetDynamics Inc., which was a Silicon Valley start-up company founded in 1995 by Zack Ranat and Ofer Ben-Shachar....
1999 - German software company StarDivision and with it StarOffice
StarOffice

StarOffice is Sun Microsystems' proprietary software office suite Computer software. It was originally developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun in August 1999....
, which was later released as open source
Open source

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source . Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical Strategy element of their business operations....
under the name OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org , commonly known simply as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems....
1999 - MAXSTRAT Corporation, a network storage company located in Milpitas, CA specializing in Fibre Channel storage servers.
1999 - Forte, an enterprise software company specializing in integration solutions and developer of Forte 4GL
Forte 4GL

Fort? 4GL is a proprietary application server used for developing scalable, highly-available, enterprise applications....
and TeamWare
TeamWare

Sun WorkShop TeamWare is a distributed source code revision control system made by Sun Microsystems. Last available as part of the Forte Developer 6 update 2 product, TeamWare is no longer being offered for sale, and is not part of the Sun Studio product....
1999 - NetBeans
NetBeans

NetBeans refers to both a Platform for the development of applications for the network , and an integrated development environment developed using the NetBeans Platform....
, a newly formed business producing a modular IDE written in Java, based on a student project at Charles University in Prague
Prague

Prague is the Capital and World's largest cities of the Czech Republic. Its official name is Hlavn? mesto Praha, meaning Prague, the Capital City....
.
July 2000 - Gridware
Sun Grid Engine

Sun Grid Engine , previously known as CODINE or GRD , is an open source batch-queuing system, developed and supported by Sun Microsystems....
, a software company whose products managed the distribution of large computing jobs across multiple computers
September 2000 - Cobalt Networks
Cobalt Networks

Cobalt Networks was a maker of low-cost Linux-based server s. Founded in 1996 in Mountain View, California under the name Cobalt Microserver, the company pioneered easy-to-use computer appliance featuring secure web user interfaces, designed for Internet service providers and small to medium sized businesses....
, an Internet appliance manufacturer
December 2000 - HighGround, with a suite of Web-based management solutions support wide range of storage technologies and applications
March 2002 - Clustra Systems
June 2002 - Afara Websystems, a company that develops next-generation SPARC processor-based technology
September 2002 - Pirus Networks, specializing in intelligent storage services
November 2002 - Terraspring, a pioneer in infrastructure automation software
June 2003 - Pixo
Pixo

Pixo was a company that developed infrastructure for wireless systems. Paul Mercer left Apple Inc. in 1994 to found Pixo. The company developed a system software toolkit in C++ which was later adopted by Apple for use in the iPod....
, adds to the capabilities of the Sun Content Delivery Server
December 2003 - Waveset Technologies, an identity management solutions company
January 2004 - Nauticus Networks
February 2004 - Kealia, a startup founded by original Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim, which had been focusing on high-performance AMD-based 64-bit servers
January 2005 - SevenSpace, a multi-platform managed services provider
May 2005 - Tarantella, Inc.
Tarantella, Inc.

Santa Cruz Operation was a software company based in Santa Cruz, California which was best known for selling three Unix variants for Intel x86 processors: Xenix, SCO UNIX , and UnixWare....
(formerly known as Santa Cruz Operation (SCO)), for $25,000,000
June 2005 - SeeBeyond, SOA software company for $387m
August 2005 - StorageTek
February 2006 - Aduva, producer of software for Solaris and Linux patch management
October 2006 - Neogent
April 2007 - SavaJe
SavaJe

SavaJe was the developer of the SavaJe OS, a Java OS for advanced mobile phones. Based on Sun Microsystems' Java ME, their phones offer a Java Swing development platform for creating richer user interfaces....
, developer of the SavaJe OS, a Java OS for mobile phones
September 2007 - Cluster File Systems
Cluster File Systems

Cluster File Systems, Inc. is the company that originally developed the Lustre distributed file system. CFS was a privately held company with offices in the United States, Canada, and China....
, Inc.
November 2007 - Vaau, provider of Enterprise Role Management and identity compliance solutions
February 2008 - MySQL AB
MySQL AB

MySQL Aktiebolag is a company that is the creator and owner of MySQL, a relational database management system, as well as related products such as MySQL Cluster....
, the company offering the popular open source database MySQL
MySQL

MySQL is a relational database management system which has more than 11 million installations. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases....
February 2008 - Innotek GmbH, developer of the VirtualBox
VirtualBox

VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, originally created by Germany software company innotek, now developed by Sun Microsystems as part of its Sun xVM virtualization platform....
virtualization product

April 2008 - Montalvo Systems
Montalvo Systems

Montalvo Systems was a Silicon Valley start-up reportedly working on an asymmetrical, x86 capable processor similar to the Cell microprocessor. The processor was to use high-performance cores for performance-intensive threads, and delegate minor tasks to the simpler cores to save silicon and power....
, failed x86 microprocessor startup acquired before first silicon
January 2009 - Q-layer, a software company with cloud computing solutions

Hardware

For the first decade of Sun's history, the company was predominantly a vendor of technical workstations, competing successfully as a low-cost vendor during the Workstation Wars of the 1980s. It now has shifted its hardware product line to emphasize servers and storage.

Motorola-based systems

Sun originally used the Motorola 68k

68k

The Motorola 680x0/m68k/68k/68K is a family of 32-bit Complex instruction set computer microprocessor central processing unit chips and was the primary competition for the Intel x86 family of chips in personal computers of the 1980s and early 1990s....
CPU

Central processing unit

Sun-1

Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX computer workstations and Server s produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in May 1982. These were based on a CPU board designed by Andy Bechtolsheim while he was a graduate student at Stanford University and funded by DARPA....
through Sun-3

Sun-3

Sun-3 was the name given to a series of UNIX computer workstations and Server s produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9th, 1985. The Sun-3 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 microprocessor, in combination with the Motorola 68881 floating-point co-processor...
computer series. The Sun-1 employed a 68000

Motorola 68000

The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit Complex instruction set computer microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor ....
CPU, the Sun-2

Sun-2

The Sun-2 series of UNIX computer workstations and Server s was launched by Sun Microsystems in November 1983. As the name suggests, the Sun-2 represented the second generation of Sun systems, superseding the original Sun-1 series....
series, a 68010

Motorola 68010

The Motorola MC68010 processor is a 16/32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1982. In common with the Motorola 68000 naming convention, it is usually just referred to as the 010 ....
. The Sun-3 series was based on the 68020

Motorola 68020

The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. It is the successor to the Motorola 68010 and is succeeded by the Motorola 68030....
, with the later Sun-3x variant using the 68030

Motorola 68030

The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's Motorola 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040....
.

SPARC-based systems

In 1987, the company began using SPARC, a processor architecture of its own design, in its computer systems, starting with the Sun-4

Sun-4

Sun-4 is a series of Unix computer workstations and server s produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RISC architecture in place of the 68k family processors of previous Sun models....
line. SPARC was initially a 32-bit

32-bit

The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295 or -2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647 using two's complement encoding....
architecture until the introduction of the SPARC V9 architecture in 1995, which added 64-bit

64-bit

64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC-based computer workstation and Server s since the early 1990s. In 2003 they were introduced to the mainstream personal computer arena, in the form of the x86-64 and 64-bit PowerPC processor architectures....
extensions.

Sun has developed several generations of SPARC-based computer systems, including the SPARCstation

SPARCstation

The SPARCstation, SPARCserver and SPARCcenter product lines were a series of SPARC-based computer workstations and server s in desktop, deskside and rack-based form factor developed and sold by Sun Microsystems...
, Ultra

Sun Ultra series

The original Sun Ultra series was a series of UltraSPARC-based computer workstations and Server s developed and sold by Sun Microsystems from 1995 to 2001....
and Sun Blade

Sun Blade

Sun Netra

The Sun Netra brand has been used for a variety of server computers from Sun Microsystems since 1994. The original Netra servers were re-badged SPARCstation and Sun Ultra series systems bundled with server application software....
, Enterprise

Sun Enterprise

Sun Enterprise is a range of UNIX server computers produced by Sun Microsystems from 1996 to 2001. The line was launched as the Sun Ultra Enterprise series; the Ultra prefix was dropped around 1998....
and Sun Fire

Sun Fire

The Sun Fire server brand is a series of server computers introduced by Sun Microsystems in 2001. The Sun Fire branding coincided with the introduction of the UltraSPARC III processor, superseding the UltraSPARC II-based Sun Enterprise series....
line of servers.

In the early 1990s the company began to extend its product line to include large-scale symmetric multiprocessing

Symmetric multiprocessing

In computing, symmetric multiprocessing or SMP involves a multiprocessor computer-architecture where two or more identical processors can connect to a single shared main memory....
servers, starting with the four-processor SPARCserver 600MP. This was followed by the 8-processor SPARCserver 1000 and 20-processor SPARCcenter 2000, which were based on work done in conjunction with Xerox PARC

Xerox PARC

PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology....
. In the late 1990s this transformation was accelerated by the acquisition of Cray Business Systems Division from Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
. Their 32-bit, 64-processor Cray Superserver 6400

Cray CS6400

The Cray Superserver 6400, or CS6400, was a multiprocessor server computer system produced by Cray Research Superservers, Inc., a subsidiary of Cray Research, and launched in 1993....
, related to the SPARCcenter, led to the 64-bit Sun Enterprise 10000 high-end server (otherwise known as Starfire). More recently, Sun has also ventured into the blade server
Blade server

Blade servers are self-contained all-inclusive server with a design optimized to minimize physical space. Whereas a standard 19-inch rack server can exist with a power cord and network cable, blade servers have many components removed for space, power and other considerations while still having all the functional components to be consider...
(high density rack-mounted systems) market.

In November 2005 Sun launched the UltraSPARC T1

UltraSPARC T1

Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor, known until its 14 November 2005 announcement by its development codename "Niagara", is a multithreading, multicore central processing unit....
, notable for its ability to concurrently run 32 threads of execution on 8 processor cores. Its intent was to drive more efficient use of CPU resources, which is of particular importance in data center

Data center

A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls and security devices....
s, where there is an increasing need to reduce power and air conditioning demands, much of which comes from the heat generated by CPUs. The T1 was followed by the UltraSPARC T2

UltraSPARC T2

Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T2 microprocessor is a Multithreading , Multi-core central processing unit. It is a member of the SPARC family, and the successor to the UltraSPARC T1....
, which extended the number of threads per core from 4 to 8, and T2 Plus, which added the ability to have multiple T2 processors in one system. Sun has open sourced the design specifications of both the T1 and T2 processors via the OpenSPARC

OpenSPARC

OpenSPARC is an open source hardware project started in December 2005. The initial contribution to the project was Sun Microsystems' Register transfer level Verilog code for a full 64-bit, 32-thread microprocessor, the UltraSPARC T1 processor....
project.

In April 2007, Sun released the SPARC Enterprise

SPARC Enterprise

Fujitsu

is a Japanese company specializing in semiconductors, air conditioners, computers , telecommunications, and Service , and is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Tokyo....
and based on Fujitsu SPARC64

SPARC64

SPARC64 is a microprocessor developed by HAL Computer Systems and fabricated by Fujitsu. It implements the SPARC instruction set architecture , the first microprocessor to do so....
processors. The M-class SPARC Enterprise systems include high-end reliability and availability features.

x86-based systems

In the late 1980s, Sun also marketed an Intel 80386

Intel 80386

The Intel 80386, otherwise known as the i386 or just 386, is a microprocessor which has been used as the central processing unit of many personal computers and workstations since 1986....
-based machine, the Sun386i

Sun386i

The Sun386i was a hybrid UNIX computer workstation/PC compatible computer system produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1988. It was based on the Intel 80386 microprocessor but shared many features with the contemporary Sun-3 series systems....
; this was designed to be a hybrid system, running SunOS but at the same time supporting DOS applications. This only remained on the market for a brief period of time. A follow-up "486i" upgrade was announced but only a few prototype units were ever manufactured.

Sun's brief first foray into x86 systems ended in the early 1990s, as it decided to concentrate on SPARC and retire the last Motorola systems and 386i products, a move dubbed by McNealy as "all the wood behind one arrowhead". Even so, Sun kept its hand in the x86 world, as a release of Solaris for PC compatibles began shipping in 1993.

In 1997 Sun acquired Diba, Inc., followed later by the acquisition of Cobalt Networks

Cobalt Networks

Cobalt Networks was a maker of low-cost Linux-based server s. Founded in 1996 in Mountain View, California under the name Cobalt Microserver, the company pioneered easy-to-use computer appliance featuring secure web user interfaces, designed for Internet service providers and small to medium sized businesses....
in 2000, with the aim of building network appliances (single function computers meant for consumers). Sun also marketed a network computer
Network computer

Network computer is a trademark of Oracle Corporation. It was used by Oracle, and an alliance of businesses including Sun and Acorn, to mean a diskless node desktop computer - or in some cases a set top box - meeting a particular minimum specification ....
(a term popularized and eventually trademarked by Oracle

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation specializes in developing and marketing enterprise software products ? particularly database management systems. Through organic growth and a number of high-profile acquisitions, Oracle enlarged its share of the software market....
); the JavaStation

JavaStation

The JavaStation was a Network Computer developed by Sun Microsystems between 1996 and 2000 intended to run only Java applications.The hardware is based on the design of the Sun SPARCstation series, a very successful line of Unix computer workstations....
was a diskless system designed to run Java applications.

Although none of these business initiatives were particularly successful, the Cobalt purchase gave Sun a toehold for its return to the x86 hardware market. In 2002, Sun introduced its first general purpose x86 system, the LX50, based in part on previous Cobalt system expertise. This was also Sun's first system announced to support Linux

Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
as well as Solaris.

In 2003, Sun announced a strategic alliance with AMD

Advanced Micro Devices

Opteron

The Opteron is Advanced Micro Devices's x86 server Central processing unit line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture ....
processor; this was followed shortly by Sun's acquisition of Kealia, a startup founded by original Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim, which had been focusing on high-performance AMD-based servers.

The following year, Sun launched the Opteron-based Sun Fire V20z and V40z servers, and the Java Workstation W1100z and W2100z workstations.

On September 12, 2005, Sun unveiled a new range of Opteron-based servers: the Sun Fire X2100, X4100 and X4200 servers. These were designed from scratch by the team led by Bechtolsheim to address heat and power consumption issues commonly faced in data centers. In July 2006, the Sun Fire X4500

Sun Fire X4500

The Sun Fire X4500 data server integrates server and storage technologies. It was announced in July, 2006 and is part of the Sun Fire server line from Sun Microsystems....
and X4600 systems were introduced, extending what is now a line of x64 systems that support not only Solaris, but Linux and Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
as well.

On January 22, 2007, Sun announced a broad strategic alliance with Intel. Intel now endorses Solaris as a mainstream operating system and as its mission critical UNIX OS for its Xeon

Xeon

OpenSolaris

File:Opensolaris-screenshot-2008-05.pngOpenSolaris is an open source operating system based on Sun Microsystems' Solaris . It is also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around it....
. Sun began using the Intel Xeon processor in its x64 server line, starting with the Sun Blade

Sun Blade

The Sun Blade brand name has been used twice by Sun Microsystems, firstly for a line of computer workstations sold from 2000 to 2006, and also for a line of blade server systems sold from 2006 onwards....
X6250 server module introduced in June 2007.

On May 05, 2008, AMD announced that its Operating System Research Center (OSRC) expanded its focus to include optimization to Sun's OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris

Sun xVM

Sun xVM is a family of four technologies from Sun Microsystems that address desktop and server virtualization, as well as datacenter automation....
virtualization products for AMD based processors.

Software

Although Sun was initially known as a hardware company, its software history began with its founding in 1982; co-founder Bill Joy

Bill Joy

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
developers of the time, having already contributed the vi

vi is a family of screen-oriented text editors which share common characteristics, such as methods of invocation from the operating system command interpreter, and characteristic user interface features....
editor, the C shell

C shell

The C shell is a Unix shell developed by Bill Joy for the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix system. It was originally derived from the 6th Edition Unix /bin/sh , the predecessor of the Bourne shell....
, and significant work on the TCP/IP stack to the BSD Unix OS. Since then, Sun has developed and acquired other software, and become widely known for the Java programming language.

Sun is known for community-based and open-source licensing of its major technologies, and for its support of its products with other open source technologies. Sun offers GNOME

Gnome

A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
-based desktop software called Java Desktop System

Java Desktop System

Java Desktop System is a desktop environment from Sun Microsystems, available for Solaris , and formerly Linux.JDS aims to provide a system familiar to the average computer user with a full suite of office productivity software such as an office suite, a web browser, email, calendaring, and instant messaging....
(originally code-named "Madhatter"), first distributed as a Linux implementation but now offered as part of the Solaris operating system. It supports its Java Enterprise System (a middleware stack) on Linux. It has released the source code for Solaris under the open-source Common Development and Distribution License

Common Development and Distribution License

Common Development and Distribution License is a free software license, produced by Sun Microsystems, based on the Mozilla Public License , version 1.1....
, via the OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris

File:Opensolaris-screenshot-2008-05.pngOpenSolaris is an open source operating system based on Sun Microsystems' Solaris . It is also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around it....
community. Sun's positioning includes a commitment to indemnify users of some software from intellectual property disputes concerning that software. It offers support services on a variety of pricing bases, including per-employee and per-socket.

A report prepared for the EU by UNU-MERIT

UNU-MERIT

UNU-MERIT is a joint research and training center of United Nations University and Maastricht University, in the Netherlands.The joint Institute was created on January 1, 2006 following the integration of the former UNU - Institute for New Technologies in Maastricht, and the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technol...
stated that Sun is the largest corporate contributor to open source movements in the world. According to this report, Sun's open source contributions exceed the combined total of the next five largest commercial contributors.

Operating systems

Sun is most well known for its Unix

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
systems, which have a reputation for system stability and a consistent design philosophy.

Sun's first workstation shipped with UniSoft

UniSoft

UniSoft Corporation is a former Unix vendor that now works on software for digital television development and broadcast....
V7 Unix

Version 7 Unix

Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system....
. Later in 1982 Sun began providing SunOS

SunOS

SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS....
, a customized 4.1BSD

Berkeley Software Distribution

Berkeley Software Distribution is the Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995....
Unix, as the operating system for its workstations.

In the late 1980s, AT&T tapped Sun to help them develop the next release of their branded UNIX, and in 1988 announced they would purchase up to a 20% stake in Sun. UNIX System V Release 4 (SVR4) was jointly developed by AT&T and Sun; this partnership triggered concern among Sun's competitors, many of whom banded together to form the Open Software Foundation

Open Software Foundation

The Open Software Foundation was an organization founded in 1988 to create an open standard for an implementation of the Unix operating system....
(OSF). By the mid-1990s, the ensuing Unix wars

Unix wars

The Unix wars were the struggles between vendors of the Unix computer operating system in the late 1980s and early 1990s to set the standard for Unix thenceforth....
had largely subsided, AT&T had sold off their Unix interests, and the relationship between the two companies was significantly reduced.

Sun used SVR4 as the foundation for Solaris 2, which became the successor to SunOS.

From 1992 Sun also sold INTERACTIVE UNIX

INTERACTIVE UNIX

INTERACTIVE UNIX System V/386 is a porting of the UNIX System V operating system for Intel x86 processors.The system was first released by INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation as 386/ix in 1985....
, an operating system it acquired when it bought INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation

INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation

INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation was a software company, known for their versions of the Unix operating system.In 1977, ISC was the first commercial Unix vendor, selling IS/1, a Version 6 Unix variant enhanced for office automation which ran on most PDP-11's.....
from Eastman Kodak Company. This was a popular UNIX variant for the PC platform and a major competitor to market leader SCO UNIX. Sun's focus on INTERACTIVE UNIX diminished in favor of Solaris on both SPARC and x86 systems; it was dropped as a product in 2001.

In the past, Sun has offered a separate variant of Solaris called Trusted Solaris

Trusted Solaris

Trusted Solaris is a security-evaluated operating system based on Solaris Operating System by Sun Microsystems, featuring a mandatory access control model....
, which included augmented security features such as multilevel security

Multilevel security

Multilevel Security is the application of a computer system to process information with different sensitivities , permit simultaneous access by users with different security clearances and needs-to-know, and prevent users from obtaining access to information for which they lack authorization....
and a least privilege access model. Solaris 10 included many of the same capabilities as Trusted Solaris when it was released in 2005; the Solaris 10 11/06 update included Solaris Trusted Extensions, which give it the remaining capabilities needed to make it the functional successor to Trusted Solaris.

Following several years of difficult competition and loss of server market share to competitors' Linux

Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
-based systems, Sun began to include Linux as part of its strategy in 2002. Sun supports both Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution produced by Red Hat and targeted toward the business market, including Mainframe computer. Red Hat commits to supporting each version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 7 years after its release....
and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a Linux distribution supplied by Novell, targeted at the business market. It is targeted for server , but can be installed on desktop computers for testing as well....
on its x64 systems; companies such as Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with its main offices in London, support office in Montreal and OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA....
, Wind River Systems

Wind River Systems

Wind River Systems, Inc. is a publicly owned company providing embedded systems, development tools for embedded systems, middleware, and other types of software....
and MontaVista

MontaVista

MontaVista Software is a software developer that develops embedded Linux system software, development tools, and related software. Its products are targeted at other corporations developing embedded systems such as automotive electronics, communications equipment, mobile phones, and other electronics devices and infrastructure....
also support their versions of Linux on Sun's SPARC-based systems.

In 2004, Sun surprised the industry when, after having cultivated a reputation as one of Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
's most vocal antagonists, it entered into a joint relationship with them, resolving various legal entanglements between the two companies and receiving US$1.95 billion in settlement payments from them. Sun now supports Microsoft Windows on its x64 systems, and has announced other collaborative agreements with Microsoft, including plans to support each others' virtualization environments.

Java platform

The Java platform was developed at Sun in the early 1990s with the objective of allowing programs to function regardless of the device they were used on, sparking the slogan "Write once, run anywhere

Write once, run anywhere

"Write once, run anywhere" , or sometimes Write once, run everywhere , is a slogan created by Sun Microsystems to illustrate the cross-platform benefits of the Java ....
" (WORA). While this objective has not been entirely achieved (prompting the riposte "Write once, debug everywhere"), Java is regarded as being largely hardware- and operating system-independent.

Java was initially promoted as a platform for client-side applets

Java applet

A Java applet is an applet delivered to the users in the form of Java bytecode. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine , or in Sun Microsystems's AppletViewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets....
running inside web browsers. Early examples of Java applications were the HotJava

HotJava

HotJava is a modular, extensible web browser from Sun Microsystems implemented in Java . It was the first browser to support Java applets, and was Sun's demonstration platform for the then new technology....
web browser

Web browser

A Web browser is a application software which enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music, games and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network....
and the HotJava Views

HotJava Views

HotJava Views was a productivity suite software suite developed by Sun Microsystems and implemented in Java . It was released in 1996 and was intended primarily for JavaStation or other JavaOS-based network computers....
suite. However, since then Java has been more successful on the server side

Server-side

Server-side refers to operations that are performed by the server in a client-server relationship in computer networking.Typically, a server is a software program, such as a web server, that runs on a remote server , reachable from a user's local computer or workstation....
of the Internet.

The platform consists of three major parts, the Java programming language, the Java Virtual Machine

Java Virtual Machine

A Java Virtual Machine is a set of computer software programs and data structures which use a virtual machine model for the execution of other computer programs and Scripting language....
(JVM), and several Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The design of the Java platform is controlled by the vendor and user community through the Java Community Process

Java Community Process

The Java Community Process or JCP, established in 1998, is a formalized process that allows interested parties to get involved in the definition of future versions and features of the Java platform....
(JCP).

Java is an object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that uses "Object_" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs....
language. Since its introduction in late 1995, it has become one of the world's most popular programming languages.

In order to allow programs written in the Java language to be run on virtually any device, Java programs are compiled to byte code, which can be executed by any JVM, regardless of the environment.

The Java API

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
s provide an extensive set of library routines. These APIs have evolved into the Standard Edition (Java SE), which provides basic infrastructure and GUI functionality; the Enterprise Edition (Java EE), aimed at large software companies implementing enterprise-class application servers; and the Micro Edition (Java ME), used to build software for devices with limited resources, such as mobile devices.

On November 13, 2006, Sun announced that it would be licensing its Java implementation under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. The GPL is the most popular and well-known example of the type of strong copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft....
; they released their Java compiler

Java compiler

A Java compiler is a compiler for the Java . The most common form of output from a Java compiler are Class containing platform-neutral Java bytecode....
and JVM at that time.

In February 2009 Sun has entered a battle with Microsoft, Adobe Systems who are promoting rival platforms to build software applications for the Internet. JavaFX

JavaFX

JavaFX is a software platform for creating and delivering rich Internet applications that can run across wide variety of connected devices. The current release enables building applications for desktop, browser and mobile phones....
is a development platform for music, video and other applications that builds on the Java programming language.

Office suite

In 1999, Sun acquired the German software company StarDivision and with it StarOffice

StarOffice

StarOffice is Sun Microsystems' proprietary software office suite Computer software. It was originally developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun in August 1999....
, which it released as the office suite

Office suite

In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite is a collection of programs intended to be used by typical clerical and knowledge workers....
OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org , commonly known simply as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems....
under both GNU LGPL and the SISSL (Sun Industry Standards Source License

Sun Industry Standards Source License

The Sun Industry Standards Source License is now a retired free software and open source license, recognized as such by the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative ....
). OpenOffice.org supports Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a popular set of interrelated desktop applications, servers and services. Microsoft Office is collectively referred to as an office suite, for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems....
file formats, is available on many platforms (primarily Linux

Linux

Microsoft Windows

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems....
, and Solaris) and is widely used in the open source community.

The current StarOffice product is a closed-source product based on OpenOffice.org. The principal differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org are that StarOffice is supported by Sun, is available as either a single-user retail box kit or as per-user blocks of licensing for the enterprise, and includes a wider range of fonts and document templates and a commercial quality spellchecker. StarOffice also contains commercially licensed functions and add-ons; in OpenOffice.org these are either replaced by open-source or free variants, or are not present at all. Both packages have native support for the OpenDocument

OpenDocument

The OpenDocument format is a file format for electronic office documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentation programs and word processor documents....
format.

Virtualization and datacenter automation software

In 2007, Sun announced the Sun xVM

Sun xVM

Sun xVM is a family of four technologies from Sun Microsystems that address desktop and server virtualization, as well as datacenter automation....
virtualization and datacenter automation product suite for commodity hardware. Sun also acquired VirtualBox

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, originally created by Germany software company innotek, now developed by Sun Microsystems as part of its Sun xVM virtualization platform....
in 2008. Earlier virtualization technologies from Sun like Dynamic System Domains and Dynamic Reconfiguration were specifically designed for high-end SPARC servers, and Logical Domains

Logical Domains

Logical Domains is a technology from Sun Microsystems released in May 2007 which offers a virtualization abstracted from all physical devices....
only supports the UltraSPARC T1/T2/T2 Plus server platforms. Sun also has the N1 provisioning software for datacenter automation.

On the client side, Sun offers virtual desktop

Virtual desktop

A virtual desktop is a term used, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which a computer's desktop environment is expanded through the use of software....
solutions. Complete desktop environments and applications can be hosted in the datacenter, with users accessing these environments from a wide range of client devices, including Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Sun Ray

The Sun Ray is a stateless server thin-client solution aimed at corporate environments, introduced by Sun Microsystems in September 1999. It features a smartcard reader and is often integrated into a flat panel display....
, Apple Macintoshes, PDAs or any combination of supported devices. A variety of networks are supported, from LAN to WAN or the public Internet. A virtual desktop solution can be provided through Sun Ray Software, Sun Secure Global Desktop

Sun Secure Global Desktop

Sun Secure Global Desktop software provides secure access to both published applications and published desktops running on Microsoft Windows, Unix, mainframe and System i systems via a variety of clients ranging from fat PCs to thin clients such as Sun Rays....
and Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Database management systems

Sun acquired MySQL AB

MySQL AB

MySQL Aktiebolag is a company that is the creator and owner of MySQL, a relational database management system, as well as related products such as MySQL Cluster....
, the developer of the MySQL

MySQL

MySQL is a relational database management system which has more than 11 million installations. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases....
database in 2008 for US$ 1 billion. CEO Jonathan Schwartz

Jonathan Schwartz

Jonathan Schwartz or Jon Schwartz may refer to:* Jonathan I. Schwartz, current President and CEO of Sun Microsystems* Jon Schwartz, founder of Morrison Schwartz, inventors of Kids Programming Language...
mentioned in his blog that optimizing the performance of MySQL is one of the priorities of the acquisition. In February 2008, Sun began to publish results of the MySQL performance optimization work. Sun is also a contributor to the PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system . It is released under a BSD licenses and is thus free software. As with many other open-source programs, PostgreSQL is not controlled by any single company, but has a global community of developers and companies to develop it....
project. On the Java platform, Sun contributes to, ships, and offers support for JavaDB.

Other software

Sun offers a range of other software products for software development and infrastructure services. Many of these products were developed in house; others have come from a series of acquisitions, including Tarantella

Tarantella, Inc.

Santa Cruz Operation was a software company based in Santa Cruz, California which was best known for selling three Unix variants for Intel x86 processors: Xenix, SCO UNIX , and UnixWare....
, Waveset Technologies,, SeeBeyond, and Vaau. Sun also acquired many of the Netscape

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a United States computer services company, best known for its web browser. The browser was once dominant in terms of Usage share of web browsers, but lost most of that share to Internet Explorer during the browser wars....
non-browser software products as part a deal involving Netscape's merger with AOL

AOL

AOL LLC is an United States global Internet services and media company operated by Time Warner and was headquartered in Loudoun County, Virginia until late April 2008 when it was moved to new offices at 770 Broadway in New York City....
.. These software products were initially offered under the iPlanet
IPlanet

iPlanet was a product brand that was used jointly by Sun Microsystems and Netscape Communications Corporation when delivering software and services as part of a non-exclusive cross marketing deal that was also known as "A Sun|Netscape Alliance"....
brand; once the Sun-Netscape alliance ended, they were re-branded as Sun ONE
Sun ONE

Sun ONE is a brand under which Sun Microsystems used to market server software products. Sun ONE stands for Sun Open Net Environment.The Sun ONE brand was primarily used for products that resulted from Sun's alliance with Netscape Communications Corporation....
(Sun Open Network Environment), and more recently as the Sun Java System
Sun Java System

Sun Java System is a brand used by Sun Microsystems to market computer software. The Sun Java System brand superseded the Sun ONE brand on September 2003....
.

Today, Sun's middleware

Middleware

Middleware is computer software that connects software components or applications. The software consists of a set of enabling services that allow multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact across a network....
stack

Solution stack

In computing, a solution stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to deliver a fully functional solution, e.g. a product or service....
is branded as the Java Enterprise System (or JES), and fulfills web and application serving, as well as communication, calendaring, directory, identity management and SOA/business integration

Service-oriented architecture

In computing, service-oriented architecture provides methods for systems development and System integration where systems group functionality around business processes and package these as Interoperability Service ....
roles. The software is available for download and use free of charge on systems running Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

HP-UX

HP-UX 11i is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary software implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V . It runs on the HP 9000 PA-RISC-based range of central processing unit and HP Integrity Intel's Itanium-based systems, and was also available for later Apollo/Domain systems....
, and Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
, with support available optionally.

Sun has developed data center management software products, which include the Solaris Cluster high availability software, and a grid

Grid computing

Grid computing is the application of several computers to a single problem at the same time -- usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data....
management package called Sun Grid Engine
Sun Grid Engine

Sun Grid Engine , previously known as CODINE or GRD , is an open source batch-queuing system, developed and supported by Sun Microsystems....
.

Sun also produces a suite of compilers and development tools under the Sun Studio
Sun Studio (software)

The Sun Studio compiler suite is Sun Microsystems' flagship software development product for Solaris and Linux. Sun Studio software delivers optimizing C, C++, and Fortran compilers, libraries, and performance analysis, and debugging tools for the Solaris OS on SPARC, and both Solaris and Linux on x86/x64 platforms, including the latest mult...
brand, for building and developing Solaris and Linux applications.

Sun has recently entered the Software as a Service

Software as a Service

Zembly

Zembly is a browser-based development environment from Sun Microsystemsthat enables social programmingof applications for Facebook, Meebo, OpenSocial, iPhone web applications, and other social platforms, as well as web widgets....
, a social cloud based computing platform and Project Kenai, an open-source project hosting service.

Storage

Sun has long sold its own storage systems to complement its system offerings; it has also made several storage-related acquisitions. On June 2, 2005, Sun announced it would purchase Storage Technology Corporation

Storage Technology Corporation

Storage Technology Corporation is a worldwide technology company that delivers a broad range of data storage offerings. StorageTek is headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, United States with manufacturing facilities in Ponce, Puerto Rico....
(StorageTek) for US$4.1 billion in cash, or $37.00 per share, a deal completed in August 2005.

In 2006, Sun introduced the Sun StorageTek 5800 System, the world's first application-aware programmable storage solution. In 2008, Sun contributed the source code of the StorageTek 5800 System under the BSD license.

Sun announced the Sun Open Storage

Sun Open Storage

Sun Open Storage is an open source computer data storage platform developed by Sun Microsystems. Based on industry-standard hardware and open source technologies from Sun Microsystems, Sun Open Storage offers an open storage architecture without vendor lock-in....
platform in 2008. Built with open and open source technologies, Sun hopes to remove vendor lock-in

Vendor lock-in

In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for Product s and Service , unable to use another vendor without substantial switching barriers....
in the storage market.

In late 2008 Sun announced the Sun Storage 7000 - Unified Storage Systems codenamed Amber Road.

Other well-known storage products include Sun Fire X4500

Sun Fire X4500

The Sun Fire X4500 data server integrates server and storage technologies. It was announced in July, 2006 and is part of the Sun Fire server line from Sun Microsystems....
storage server and SAM-QFS

QFS

QFS is an open source filesystem from Sun Microsystems. It is tightly integrated with SAM, the Storage and Archive Manager, and hence is often referred to as SAM-QFS....
filesystem and storage management software.

HPC solutions

With Sun Constellation System

Sun Constellation System

Sun Constellation System is an open petascale computing environment introduced by Sun Microsystems in 2007....
, Sun is increasing its focus in High-Performance Computing

High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers....
(HPC). Even before the introduction of the Sun Constellation System in 2007, Sun's products were already in use in many of the TOP500

TOP500

The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year....
systems and supercomputing centers:

Lustre
Lustre (file system)

Lustre is an object-based file system, distributed file system, generally used for large scale cluster computing. The name Lustre is a blend of the words Linux and computer cluster....
- used by 7 of the top 10 supercomputers in 2008, as well as other industries that need scalable and high-performance storage: 6 major oil companies (including BP
BP

BP plc , is the third largest global energy corporation, a multinational corporation oil company with headquarters in London. The company is among the largest private sector energy corporations in the world, and one of the six "supermajors" ....
, Shell
Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell public limited company, commonly known simply as Shell, is a multinational corporation oil company of Netherlands and United Kingdom origins....
, and ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil

The Exxon Mobil Corporation, or ExxonMobil, is an United States petroleum and natural gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D....
), chip-design (including Synopsys
Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. is one of the largest companies in the electronic design automation industry. Synopsys' first and best-known product is Design Compiler, a logic-synthesis tool....
and Sony
Sony

is a multinational corporation list of conglomerates corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's largest media conglomerates with revenue exceeding US$99.1 billion ....
), and the movie-industry (including Harry Potter and Spider-Man
Spider-Man

Spider-Man is a fictional character appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character First appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 , and was created by scripter-editor Stan Lee and artist-plotter Steve Ditko....
).
Sun Fire X4500
Sun Fire X4500

The Sun Fire X4500 data server integrates server and storage technologies. It was announced in July, 2006 and is part of the Sun Fire server line from Sun Microsystems....
- used by high energy physics supercomputers to run dCache
Sun Grid Engine
Sun Grid Engine

Sun Grid Engine , previously known as CODINE or GRD , is an open source batch-queuing system, developed and supported by Sun Microsystems....
- a popular workload scheduler for clusters and compute farms
Sun Visualization System
Sun Visualization System

Sun Visualization System is a sharable visualization solution introduced by Sun Microsystems in 2007. It uses technologies in other Sun products, including Sun servers, Solaris , Sun Grid Engine....
- allows users of the TeraGrid
TeraGrid

TeraGrid is an open scientific discovery Information Infrastructure combining large computing resources at nine Resource Provider partner sites to create an integrated, persistent computational resource....
to remotely access the 3D rendering capabilities of the Maverick system at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a public university research university located in Austin, Texas, Texas, United States, and is the flagship#University campuses institution of University of Texas System....
Sun Modular Datacenter
Sun Modular Datacenter

Sun Modular Datacenter is a portable data center built into a standard 20' shipping container manufactured and marketed by Sun Microsystems. An external chiller and power are required for the operation of a Sun MD....
(Project Blackbox) - two Sun MD S20 units are used by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Laboratories operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S....

The Sun HPC ClusterTools product is a set of MPI

Message Passing Interface

Message Passing Interface is a specification for an API that allows many computers to communicate with one another. It is used in computer clusters and supercomputers....
libraries and tools for running parallel jobs on Solaris HPC clusters. Beginning with version 7.0, Sun switched from its own implementation of MPI to Open MPI

Open MPI

Open MPI is a project combining technologies and resources from several other projects with the stated aim of building the best Message Passing Interface library available....
, and has started donating engineering resources to the Open MPI project.

Sun is a participant in the OpenMP

OpenMP

The OpenMP is an application programming interface that supports multi-platform shared memory multiprocessing programming in C , C++ and Fortran on many architectures, including Unix and Microsoft Windows platforms....
language committee. Sun Studio

Sun Studio (software)

The Sun Studio compiler suite is Sun Microsystems' flagship software development product for Solaris and Linux. Sun Studio software delivers optimizing C, C++, and Fortran compilers, libraries, and performance analysis, and debugging tools for the Solaris OS on SPARC, and both Solaris and Linux on x86/x64 platforms, including the latest mult...
compilers and tools natively implement the OpenMP specification for shared memory parallelization.

In 2006, Sun built the TSUBAME supercomputer, which was until June 2008 the fastest supercomputer in Asia. Sun built Ranger at the Texas Advanced Computing Center

Texas Advanced Computing Center

The Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin, United States, is a research center for advanced computational science, computer engineering and technology....
(TACC) in 2007. Ranger has a peak performance of over 500 TFLOPS, and is currently the 6th most powerful supercomputer on the TOP500

TOP500

OpenSolaris

File:Opensolaris-screenshot-2008-05.pngOpenSolaris is an open source operating system based on Sun Microsystems' Solaris . It is also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around it....
distribution that is optimized for HPC workloads. The distribution integrates many of Sun's HPC products and other commonly used 3rd-party solutions.

Staff

Notable Sun employees include John Gilmore, Whitfield Diffie

Whitfield Diffie

Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie is a United States cryptographer and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography.He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965....
, Radia Perlman

Radia Perlman

Dr. Radia Joy Perlman is a software designer and network engineer sometimes referred to as the 'Mother of the Internet'. She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation, which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges....
, Marc Tremblay

Marc Tremblay

Marc Tremblay is a fellow, senior vice president, chief technology officer, and chief architect at Sun Microsystems. He has been instrumental in the design of various microprocessors at Sun, including MAJC, UltraSPARC I, UltraSPARC II, UltraSPARC T1, and currently the Rock processor....
, and Ned Freed

Ned Freed

Ned Freed is the author or co-author of severalInternet Engineering Task ForceRequest for comments, most relating to e-mail or security. they include:...
. Sun was an early advocate of Unix

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
-based networked computing, promoting TCP/IP and especially NFS, as reflected in the company's motto "The Network Is The Computer", coined by John Gage

John Gage

John Burdette Gage , an early employee of Sun Microsystems. He served as Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun until leaving on June 9, 2008 to join Kleiner Perkins as a partner to help solve global warming.He is also best known as one of the co-founders of NetDay in 1995....
. James Gosling

James Gosling

James A. Gosling, Order of Canada, Doctor of Philosophy is a famous software developer, best known as the father of the Java ....
led the team which developed the Java programming language

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
. Most recently, Jon Bosak

Jon Bosak

Jon Bosak led the creation of the XML specification at the W3C.Tim Bray, who was one of the editors of the XML specification, has this to say in his note on Bosak in his : "Jon Bosak is the single person without whose efforts XML would most likely have failed to happen....
led the creation of the XML specification at W3C.

Many Sun staff publish articles on the company's blog site. Staff are encouraged to use the site to blog on any aspect of their work or personal life. There are few restrictions placed on staff, other than commercially confidential material. Sun staff are inspired to blog by CEO Jonathan I. Schwartz

Jonathan I. Schwartz

Jonathan Ian Schwartz is the current President and chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems, as well as a member of the Company's Board of Directors....
, whose own blog is widely read, is translated into other languages, and is frequently quoted and analyzed in the press.

External links

- Sun employees openly blogging about work and non-work
- Wiki spaces created by Sun employees
- Sun Hardware and Software References and Information

Sun Microsystems

History

The "Bubble" and its aftermath

Present focus

Acquisitions

Hardware

Motorola-based systems

SPARC-based systems

x86-based systems

Software

Operating systems

Java platform

Office suite

Virtualization and datacenter automation software

Database management systems

Other software

Storage

HPC solutions

Staff

See also

External links