Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold
computer
A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
s,
computer components,
software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications.
The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...
, and
information technology
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
services. Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
,
RISC processors,
thin client
In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-Computer performance, performance) computer that has been Program optimization, optimized for Remote desktop, establishing a remote connectio ...
computing, and
virtualized computing. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...
(part of
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
), on the former west campus of the
Agnews Developmental Center.
Sun products included
computer servers and
workstation
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...
s built on its own
RISC
In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...
-based
SPARC processor architecture, as well as on
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
-based
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
Opteron and
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
Xeon
Xeon (; ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same archite ...
processors. Sun also developed its own
storage systems and a suite of software products, including the Unix-based
SunOS
SunOS is a Unix-branded operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems from 1982 until the mid-1990s. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based ...
and later
Solaris operating systems, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and
identity management
Identity and access management (IAM or IdAM) or Identity management (IdM), is a framework of policies and technologies to ensure that the right users (that are part of the ecosystem connected to or within an enterprise) have the appropriate acce ...
applications. Technologies that Sun created include the
Java programming language
Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...
, the
Java platform
Java is a set of computer software and specifications that provides a software platform for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms fr ...
and
Network File System
Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, like ...
(NFS).
In general, Sun was a proponent of open systems, particularly Unix. It was also a major contributor to
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
, as evidenced by its $1 billion purchase, in 2008, of
MySQL
MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...
, an open-source
relational database management system
A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970.
A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...
. Other notable Sun acquisitions include
Cray Business Systems Division,
Storagetek, and Innotek GmbH, creators of
VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...
. On April 20, 2009, it was announced that
Oracle would acquire Sun for 7.4 billion. The deal was completed on January 27, 2010.
History
The initial design for what became Sun's first Unix
workstation
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...
, the
Sun-1
Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX computer workstations and servers 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 an ...
, was conceived by
Andy Bechtolsheim when he was a graduate student at
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
in
Palo Alto
Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
Th ...
, California. Bechtolsheim originally designed the
SUN workstation for the
Stanford University Network communications project as a personal
CAD workstation. It was designed around the
Motorola 68000 processor with an advanced
memory management unit
A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), is a computer hardware unit that examines all references to computer memory, memory, and translates the memory addresses being referenced, known as virtual mem ...
(MMU) to support the Unix operating system with
virtual memory
In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a ver ...
support. He built the first examples from spare parts obtained from Stanford's
Department of Computer Science and Silicon Valley supply houses.
On February 24, 1982,
Scott McNealy,
Andy Bechtolsheim, and
Vinod Khosla, all Stanford graduate students, founded ''Sun Microsystems''.
Bill Joy
William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO ...
of Berkeley, a primary developer of the
Berkeley Software Distribution
The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginn ...
(BSD), joined soon after and is counted as one of the original founders. The company was the second, after rival
Apollo Computer, to specialize in workstations.
The name "Sun" is derived from the initials of the Stanford University Network (SUN). Sun was profitable from its first quarter in July 1982.
By 1983, Sun was known for producing
68k-based systems with high-quality graphics that were the only computers other than
DEC's
VAX to run
4.2BSD. It licensed the
computer design to other manufacturers, which typically used it to build
Multibus-based systems running Unix from
UniSoft.
Wall Street
Wall Street is a street in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway in the west and South Street (Manhattan), South Str ...
was an important early market.
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 is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of the two key components of brand knowledge, as defined by the associative network memory model. It plays ...
associated with its Java platform better represented the company's current strategy.
Sun's logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word ''sun'' in the form of a rotationally symmetric
ambigram
An ambigram is a calligraphic composition of glyphs (letters, numbers, symbols or other shapes) that can yield different meanings depending on the orientation of observation. Most ambigrams are visual palindromes that rely on some kind of symmetry ...
, was designed by professor
Vaughan Pratt
Vaughan Pratt (born April 12, 1944) is a Professor, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, who was an early pioneer in the field of computer science. Since 1969, Pratt has made several contributions to foundational areas such as search algorit ...
, also of Stanford. The initial version of the logo was orange and had the sides oriented horizontally and vertically, but it was subsequently rotated to stand on one corner and re-colored purple, and later blue.
Dot-com bubble and aftermath
During the
dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...
, Sun began making more money, with its stock rising as high as $250 per share. It also began spending much more, hiring workers and building itself out. Some of this was because of genuine demand, but much was from web start-up companies anticipating business that would never happen. In 2000, the bubble burst. Sales in Sun's important hardware division went into free-fall as customers closed shop and auctioned high-end servers.
Several quarters of steep losses led to executive departures, rounds of layoffs, and other cost cutting. In December 2001, the stock fell to the 1998, pre-bubble level of about $100. It continued to fall, faster than many other technology companies. A year later, it had reached below $10 (a tenth of what it was in 1990), but it eventually bounced back to $20. In mid-2004, Sun closed their
Newark, California, factory and consolidated all manufacturing to Hillsboro, Oregon and Linlithgow, Scotland. In 2006, the rest of the Newark campus was put on the market.
Post-crash focus

In 2004, Sun canceled two major processor projects which emphasized high
instruction-level parallelism
Instruction-level parallelism (ILP) is the Parallel computing, parallel or simultaneous execution of a sequence of Instruction set, instructions in a computer program. More specifically, ILP refers to the average number of instructions run per st ...
and operating frequency. Instead, the company chose to concentrate on processors optimized for
multi-threading and
multiprocessing
Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...
, such as the
UltraSPARC T1 processor (codenamed "Niagara"). The company also announced a collaboration with
Fujitsu to use the Japanese 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 series.
In February 2005, Sun announced the
Sun Grid
Sun Cloud (also known as Network.com) was an on-demand cloud computing service operated by Sun Microsystems prior to Sun's acquisition by Oracle Corporation. The Sun Cloud Compute Utility provided access to a substantial computing resource over the ...
, a
grid computing
Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished fro ...
deployment on which it offered
utility computing services priced at US$1 per CPU/hour for processing and per GB/month for storage. This offering built upon an existing 3,000-CPU server farm used for internal R&D for over 10 years, which Sun marketed as being able to achieve 97% utilization. In August 2005, the first commercial use of this grid was announced for financial risk simulations which were later launched as its first
software as a service
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...
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 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 & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global private-equity and investment company. , the firm had completed private-equity investments in portfolio companies with approximately $710 billion of total ...
(KKR) would invest $700 million in the company.
Sun had engineering groups in
Bangalore
Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...
,
Beijing
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
,
Dublin
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
,
Grenoble
Grenoble ( ; ; or ; or ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of the Isère Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regions of France, region ...
,
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
,
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
,
St. Petersburg,
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...
,
Tokyo
Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
,
Canberra
Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...
and
Trondheim
Trondheim ( , , ; ), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros, and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2022, it had a population of 212,660. Trondheim is the third most populous municipality in Norway, and is ...
.
In 2007–2008, Sun posted revenue of $13.8 billion and had $2 billion in cash. First-quarter 2008 losses were $1.68 billion; revenue fell 7% to $12.99 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 expected to save $700 million to $800 million a year as a result of the moves, while also taking up to $600 million in charges.
Acquisition by Oracle

On September 3, 2009, the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle. On November 9, 2009, the Commission issued a statement of objections relating to the acquisition. Finally, on January 21, 2010, the European Commission approved Oracle's acquisition of Sun. The Commission's investigation showed that another open database, PostgreSQL, was considered by many users of this type of software as a credible alternative to MySQL and could to some extent replace the competitive strength that the latter currently represents in the database market.
Sun was sold to Oracle Corporation in 2009 for $5.6 billion.
Sun's staff were asked to share anecdotes about their experiences at Sun. A website containing videos, stories, and photographs from 27 years at Sun was made available on September 2, 2009.
In October, Sun announced a second round of thousands of employees to be laid off, blamed partially on delays in approval of the merger.
The transaction was completed in early 2010.
In January 2011, Oracle agreed to pay $46 million to settle charges that it submitted false claims to US federal government agencies and paid "kickbacks" to systems integrators.
In February 2011, Sun's former
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park ( ) is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, California, Eas ...
, campus of about was sold, and it was announced that it would become headquarters for
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
.
The sprawling facility built around an enclosed courtyard had been nicknamed "Sun Quentin". The campus is now the headquarters of Facebook's parent company
Meta Platforms
Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads ...
.
On September 1, 2011, Sun India legally became part of Oracle. It had been delayed due to legal issues in Indian court.
Sun acquisitions

* 1987: Trancept Systems, a high-performance graphics hardware company
* 1987: Sitka Corp, networking systems linking the Macintosh with IBM PCs
* 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 font format
* 1991:
Interactive Systems Corporation's Intel/Unix OS division, from
Eastman Kodak Company
* 1992: Praxsys Technologies, Inc., developers of the Windows emulation technology that eventually became
Wabi
* 1994:
Thinking Machines Corporation
Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer manufacturer and artificial intelligence (AI) company, founded in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1983 by Sheryl Handler and Danny Hillis, W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis to turn Hillis's doctoral work at th ...
hardware division
* 1996:
Lighthouse Design, Ltd.
* 1996:
Cray Business Systems Division, from
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
* 1996: Integrated Micro Products, specializing in
fault tolerant servers
* 1996: Thinking Machines Corporation software division
* February 1997:
LongView Technologies, LLC
* August 1997: Diba, technology supplier for the Information Appliance industry
* September 1997:
Chorus Systèmes SA, creators of
ChorusOS
* November 1997:
Encore Computer Corporation's storage business
* 1998: RedCape Software
* 1998: i-Planet, a small software company that produced the "Pony Espresso" mobile email client—its name (sans hyphen) for the
Sun-Netscape software alliance
* June 1998: Dakota Scientific Software, Inc.—development tools for high-performance computing
* July 1998: NetDynamics—developers of the
NetDynamics Application Server
* October 1998: Beduin, small software company that produced the "Impact" small-footprint Java-based Web browser for mobile devices.
* 1999:
Star Division, German software company and with it
StarOffice, which was later released as open source under the name
OpenOffice.org
* 1999: MAXSTRAT Corporation, a company in
Milpitas, California
Milpitas (Spanish for or little cornfields) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, part of Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, it is bordered by San Jose, California, S ...
selling
Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...
storage servers.
* October 1999: Forté Software, an enterprise software company specializing in integration solutions and developer of the
Forte 4GL
* 1999:
TeamWare
* 1999:
NetBeans
NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java (programming language), Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called ''modules''. NetBeans runs on Microsoft Windows, Windows, ...
, produced a modular
IDE written in Java, based on a student project at
Charles University
Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...
in Prague
* March 2000: Innosoft International, Inc. a software company specializing in highly scalable MTAs (PMDF) and Directory Services.
* July 2000:
Gridware, a software company whose products managed the distribution of computing jobs across multiple computers
* September 2000:
Cobalt Networks, an Internet appliance manufacturer for $2 billion
* December 2000: HighGround, with a suite of Web-based management solutions
* 2001: LSC, Inc., an Eagan, Minnesota company that developed Storage and Archive Management File System (SAM-FS) and Quick File System
QFS file systems for backup and archive
* March 2001: InfraSearch, a peer-to-peer search company based in Burlingame.
* March 2002: Clustra Systems
* June 2002:
Afara Websystems, developed SPARC processor–based technology
* September 2002: Pirus Networks, intelligent storage services
* November 2002:
Terraspring, infrastructure automation software
* June 2003:
Pixo, added to the Sun Content Delivery Server
* August 2003: CenterRun, Inc.
* December 2003: Waveset Technologies, identity management
* January 2004 Nauticus Networks
* February 2004: Kealia, founded by original Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim, developed AMD-based 64-bit servers
* January 2005: SevenSpace, a multi-platform managed services provider
* May 2005:
Tarantella, Inc. (formerly known as
Santa Cruz Operation
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (usually known as SCO, pronounced either as individual letters or as a word) was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants ...
(SCO)), for $25 million
* June 2005: SeeBeyond, a
Service-Oriented Architecture
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. SOA is a good choice for system integration. By consequence, it is also applied in the field ...
(SOA) software company for $387m
* June 2005:
Procom Technology, Inc.'s NAS IP Assets
* August 2005:
StorageTek, data storage technology company for $4.1 billion
* February 2006: Aduva, software for Solaris and Linux patch management
* October 2006: Neogent
* April 2007:
SavaJe, the SavaJe OS, a Java OS for mobile phones
* September 2007:
Cluster File Systems, Inc.
* November 2007: Vaau, Enterprise Role Management and identity compliance solutions
* February 2008:
MySQL AB
MySQL AB was a Swedish software company founded in 1995. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, Sun was in turn acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010. MySQL AB is the creator of MySQL, a relational database management system, as well a ...
, the company offering the open source database MySQL for $1 billion.
* February 2008:
Innotek GmbH, developer of the
VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...
virtualization product
* April 2008:
Montalvo Systems, x86 microprocessor startup acquired before first silicon
* January 2009: Q-layer, a software company with cloud computing solutions
Major stockholders
As of May 11, 2009, the following shareholders held over 100,000
common shares of Sun
and at $9.50 per share offered by Oracle, they received the amounts indicated when the acquisition closed.
Hardware
For the first decade of Sun's history, the company positioned its products as technical
workstations
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...
, competing successfully as a low-cost vendor during the Workstation Wars of the 1980s. It then shifted its hardware product line to emphasize servers and storage. High-level telecom control systems such as
Operational Support Systems service predominantly used Sun equipment.
Motorola-based systems
Sun originally used
Motorola 68000 family
The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...
central processing units for the
Sun-1
Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX computer workstations and servers 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 an ...
through
Sun-3
Sun-3 is a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9, 1985. The Sun-3 series are VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 mic ...
computer series. The Sun-1 employed a 68000 CPU, the
Sun-2
The Sun-2 series of UNIX workstations and servers 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. The Sun-2 series used ...
series, a
68010. The Sun-3 series was based on the
68020, with the later Sun-3x using the
68030.
SPARC-based systems

In 1987, the company began using ''SPARC (Scalable Processor ARChitecture)'', a RISC processor architecture of its own design, in its computer systems, starting with the
Sun-4
Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, first appearing in July 1987, with the launch of the Sun 4/260. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employi ...
line. SPARC was initially a
32-bit
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...
architecture (SPARC V7) until the introduction of the SPARC V9 architecture in 1995, which added
64-bit
In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...
extensions.
Sun developed several generations of SPARC-based computer systems, including the
SPARCstation
The SPARCstation, SPARCserver and SPARCcenter product lines are a series of SPARC-based computer workstations and server (computing), servers in desktop, desk side (pedestal) and rack-based form factor configurations, that were developed and sol ...
,
Ultra, and
Sun Blade series of workstations, and the SPARCserver,
Netra,
Enterprise
Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to:
Business and economics
Brands and enterprises
* Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company
* Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company
* Enterpris ...
, and
Sun Fire line of servers.
In the early 1990s the company began to extend its product line to include large-scale
symmetric multiprocessing
Symmetric multiprocessing or shared-memory multiprocessing (SMP) involves a multiprocessor computer hardware and software architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single, shared main memory, have full access to all ...
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. In 1995 the company introduced
Sun Ultra series machines that were equipped with the first 64-bit implementation of SPARC processors (
UltraSPARC
The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems and fabricated by Texas Instruments, introduced in mid-1995. It is the first microprocessor from Sun to implement the 64-bit SPARC V9 instruction set architecture (ISA). Marc Tre ...
). In the late 1990s the transformation of product line in favor of large 64-bit SMP systems was accelerated by the acquisition of Cray Business Systems Division from Silicon Graphics.
Their 32-bit, 64-processor
Cray Superserver 6400, related to the SPARCcenter, led to the 64-bit
Sun Enterprise 10000 high-end server (otherwise known as ''Starfire'' or E10K).
In September 2004, Sun made available systems with
UltraSPARC IV which was the first multi-core SPARC processor. It was followed by UltraSPARC IV+ in September 2005 and its revisions with higher clock speeds in 2007. These CPUs were used in the most powerful, enterprise class high-end
CC-NUMA servers developed by Sun, such as the Sun Fire E15K and the
Sun Fire E25K.
In November 2005, Sun launched the
UltraSPARC T1, 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
A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems.
Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...
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 in 2007 by the
UltraSPARC T2, which extended the number of threads per core from 4 to 8. Sun has open sourced the design specifications of both the T1 and T2 processors via the
OpenSPARC project.
In 2006, Sun ventured into the ''
blade server'' (high density rack-mounted systems) market with the
Sun Blade (distinct from the Sun Blade workstation).
In April 2007, Sun released the SPARC Enterprise server products, jointly designed by Sun and Fujitsu and based on Fujitsu
SPARC64 VI and later processors. The ''M-class'' SPARC Enterprise systems include high-end reliability and availability features. Later T-series servers have also been badged SPARC Enterprise rather than Sun Fire.
In April 2008, Sun released servers with UltraSPARC T2 Plus, which is an SMP capable version of UltraSPARC T2, available in 2 or 4 processor configurations. It was the first CoolThreads CPU with multi-processor capability and it made possible to build standard rack-mounted servers that could simultaneously process up to massive 256 CPU threads in hardware (Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440), which is considered a record in the industry.
Since 2010, all further development of Sun machines based on SPARC architecture (including new
SPARC T-Series The SPARC T-series family of RISC processors and server computers, based on the SPARC V9 architecture, was originally developed by Sun Microsystems, and later by Oracle Corporation after its Acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, acq ...
servers,
SPARC T3 and
T4 chips) is done as a part of Oracle Corporation hardware division.
x86-based systems
In the late 1980s, Sun also marketed an
Intel 80386
The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit computing, 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in ...
–based machine, the
Sun386i; this was designed to be a hybrid system, running
SunOS
SunOS is a Unix-branded operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems from 1982 until the mid-1990s. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based ...
but at the same time supporting
DOS applications. This only remained on the market for a brief time. A follow-up "486i" upgrade was announced but only a few prototype units were ever manufactured.
Sun's brief first foray into
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
systems ended in the early 1990s, as it decided to concentrate on
SPARC and retire the last
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...
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
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
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 in 2000, with the aim of building ''network appliances'' (single function computers meant for consumers). Sun also marketed a
Network Computer
In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are som ...
(a term popularized and eventually trademarked by
Oracle
An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination.
Descript ...
); the
JavaStation 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 ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
as well as Solaris.
In 2003, Sun announced a strategic alliance with
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
to produce x86/x64 servers based on AMD's
Opteron 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
Sun Java Workstation W1100z and W2100z workstations.
In September 2005 Sun unveiled a new range of Opteron-based servers: the Sun Fire X2100, X4100 and X4200 servers. These were designed from scratch by a team led by Bechtolsheim to address heat and power consumption issues commonly faced in data centers. In July 2006, the
Sun Fire X4500 and X4600 systems were introduced, extending a line of x64 systems that support not only Solaris, but also
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
and
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
.
In January 2007 Sun announced a broad strategic alliance with
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
. Intel endorsed Solaris as a mainstream operating system and as its mission critical
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
for its
Xeon
Xeon (; ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same archite ...
processor–based systems, and contributed engineering resources to
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010.
OpenSolaris was developed as ...
. Sun began using the Intel Xeon processor in its
x64 server line, starting with the Sun Blade X6250 server module introduced in June 2007.
In May 2008 AMD announced its Operating System Research Center (OSRC) was expanding its focus to include optimization to Sun's OpenSolaris and
xVM virtualization products for AMD processors.
Software
Although Sun was initially known as a hardware company, its software history began with its founding in 1982; co-founder Bill Joy was one of the leading Unix developers of the time, having contributed the
vi editor, the
C shell
The C shell (csh or the improved version, tcsh) is a Unix shell created by Bill Joy while he was a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s. It has been widely distributed, beginning with the 2BSD release of the ...
, and significant work developing
TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
and the
BSD Unix OS. Sun later developed software such as the
Java programming language
Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...
and acquired software such as
StarOffice,
VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...
and
MySQL
MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...
. In February 1991, the company established SunSoft, Inc., a wholly owned division of Sun dedicated to the development of operating systems and application software.
Sun used community-based and open-source licensing of its major technologies, and for its support of its products with other open source technologies.
GNOME
A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...
-based desktop software called
Java Desktop System (originally code-named "Madhatter") was distributed for the Solaris operating system, and at one point for Linux. Sun supported its
Java Enterprise System (a
middleware
Middleware is a type of computer software program that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue".
Middleware makes it easier for software developers to imple ...
stack) on Linux. It released the source code for Solaris under the
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
Common Development and Distribution License, via the OpenSolaris 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 2006 report prepared for the EU by
UNU-MERIT stated that Sun was 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 best known for its Unix systems, which have a reputation for system stability and a consistent design philosophy.
Sun's first workstation shipped with
UniSoft V7 Unix. Later in 1982 Sun began providing
SunOS
SunOS is a Unix-branded operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems from 1982 until the mid-1990s. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based ...
, a customized 4.2BSD Unix, as the operating system for its workstations.
SunOS included
suntools, an early
GUI window system.
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.
Sun used SVR4 as the foundation for Solaris 2.x, which became the successor to SunOS 4.1.x (later retroactively named Solaris 1.x). By the mid-1990s, the ensuing
Unix wars had largely subsided, AT&T had sold off their Unix interests, and the relationship between the two companies was significantly reduced.
In the early 1990s,
Brian P. Dougherty, founder of
Berkeley Softworks (which would go on to be re-incorporated as the ''GeoWorks Corporation'') accused
the Java development team at Sun for studying GeoWorks's
PC/GEOS operating system and incorporating features of PC/GEOS into their Unix-based operating system. Brian claimed that the object-oriented and flexible UI of PC/GEOS was "to this day the most sophisticated UI technology ever built into an OS".
From 1992 Sun also sold
Interactive Unix
Interactive Systems Corporation (styled INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, abbreviated ISC) was a US-based software company and the first vendor of the Unix operating system outside AT&T, operating from Santa Monica, California. It was founded in 19 ...
, an operating system it acquired when it bought Interactive Systems Corporation 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.
Sun dropped the Solaris 2.x version numbering scheme after the Solaris 2.6 release (1997); the following version was branded Solaris 7. This was the first 64-bit release, intended for the new
UltraSPARC
The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems and fabricated by Texas Instruments, introduced in mid-1995. It is the first microprocessor from Sun to implement the 64-bit SPARC V9 instruction set architecture (ISA). Marc Tre ...
CPUs based on the SPARC V9 architecture. Within the next four years, the successors Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 were released in 2000 and 2002 respectively.
Following several years of difficult competition and loss of server market share to competitors' Linux-based systems, Sun began to include Linux as part of its strategy in 2002. Sun supported both
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and ...
and
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop computers.
Its major ve ...
on its x64 systems; companies such as
Canonical Ltd.,
Wind River Systems
Wind River Systems, Inc., also known as Wind River (trademarked as Wndrvr), is an Alameda, California–based company, subsidiary of Aptiv PLC. The company develops embedded system and cloud software consisting of real-time operating systems sof ...
and
MontaVista also supported their versions of Linux on Sun's SPARC-based systems.
In 2004, after having cultivated a reputation as one of
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
's most vocal antagonists, Sun 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 supported Microsoft Windows on its x64 systems, and announced other collaborative agreements with Microsoft, including plans to support each other's virtualization environments.
In 2005, the company released Solaris 10. The new version included a large number of enhancements to the operating system, as well as very novel features, previously unseen in the industry. Solaris 10 update releases continued through the next 8 years, the last release from Sun Microsystems being Solaris 10 10/09. The following updates were released by Oracle under the new license agreement; the final release is Solaris 10 1/13.
Previously, Sun offered a separate variant of Solaris called
Trusted Solaris, which included augmented security features such as
multilevel security
Multilevel security or multiple levels of security (MLS) is the application of a computer system to process information with incompatible classifications (i.e., at different security levels), permit access by users with different security clearan ...
and a
least privilege access model. Solaris 10 included many of the same capabilities as Trusted Solaris at the time of its initial release; Solaris 10 11/06 included Solaris Trusted Extensions, which give it the remaining capabilities needed to make it the functional successor to Trusted Solaris.
After the release of Solaris 10, the Solaris source code was opened under the
CDDL
The Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) is a free and open-source software license, produced by Sun Microsystems, based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under o ...
free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
license and developed in open with contributing
Opensolaris community through
SXCE that used
SVR4 .pkg packaging and supported
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010.
OpenSolaris was developed as ...
releases that used
IPS.
Following the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, OpenSolaris continued to develop in open under
illumos
Illumos (stylized as "illumos") is a partly free and open-source Unix operating system. It has been developed since 2010 and is based on OpenSolaris, after the discontinuation of that product by Oracle. It comprises a kernel, device driver ...
with
illumos distributions.
Oracle Corporation continued to develop Solaris, reverting new development back to the
proprietary licensing; its next release was
Oracle Solaris 11 in November 2011.
Java platform
The Java platform was developed at Sun by
James Gosling
James Arthur Gosling (born 19 May 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java (programming language), Java programming language.
Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of E ...
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'' (WORA), or sometimes ''Write once, run everywhere'' (WORE), was a 1995 slogan created by Sun Microsystems to illustrate the cross-platform benefits of the Java (programming language), Java programming language. Ideally, ...
" (WORA). While this objective was not 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'' running inside web browsers. Early examples of Java applications were the
HotJava web browser
A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
and the
HotJava Views suite. However, since then Java has been more successful on the
server side of the Internet.
The platform consists of three major parts: the Java programming language, the
Java Virtual Machine
A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally descr ...
(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
The Java Community Process (JCP), established in 1998, is a formal mechanism that enables interested parties to develop standard technical specifications for Java technology. Becoming a member of the JCP requires solid knowledge of the Java program ...
(JCP).
Java is an
object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...
language. Since its introduction in late 1995, it became one of the world's most popular programming languages.
Java programs are compiled to
byte code, which can be executed by any JVM, regardless of the environment.
The Java
API
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...
s provide an extensive set of library routines. These APIs 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 it would be licensing its Java implementation under the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
; it released its
Java compiler and JVM at that time.
In February 2009, Sun entered a battle with Microsoft and Adobe Systems, which promoted rival platforms to build software applications for the Internet.
JavaFX was 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 Star Division and with it the office suite
Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintin ...
StarOffice, which Sun later released as OpenOffice.org under both GNU LGPL and the SISSL ( Sun Industry Standards Source License). OpenOffice.org supported Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...
file formats (though not perfectly), was available on many platforms (primarily Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
, and Solaris) and was used in the open source community.
The principal differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org were that StarOffice was supported by Sun, was available as either a single-user retail box kit or as per-user blocks of licensing for the enterprise, and included a wider range of fonts and document templates and a commercial quality spellchecker. StarOffice also contained commercially licensed functions and add-ons; in OpenOffice.org these were either replaced by open-source or free variants, or are not present at all. Both packages had native support for the OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processor, word processing documents, spreadsheets, Presentation program, presentations and ...
format.
Derivatives of OpenOffice.org continue to be developed, these are LibreOffice
LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...
, Collabora Online
Collabora Online is an open source online office suite based on LibreOffice, enabling web-based collaborative real-time editing of word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and vector graphics. Optional apps are available for deskto ...
and Apache OpenOffice
Apache OpenOffice (AOO) is an open-source software, open-source office suite, office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony. It was a close cousin of ...
.
Virtualization and datacenter automation software
In 2007, Sun announced the Sun xVM virtualization and datacenter automation product suite for commodity hardware. Sun also acquired VirtualBox 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 only supports the UltraSPARC T1/T2/T2 Plus server platforms. Sun marketed '' Sun Ops Center'' provisioning software for datacenter automation.
On the client side, Sun offered virtual desktop
In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP (computing), WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the virtual space of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical ...
solutions. Desktop environments and applications could be hosted in a datacenter, with users accessing these environments from a wide range of client devices, including Microsoft Windows PCs, Sun Ray virtual display clients, Apple
An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
Macintoshes, PDAs or any combination of supported devices. A variety of networks were supported, from LAN to WAN or the public Internet. Virtual desktop products included Sun Ray Server Software, Sun Secure Global Desktop and Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
Database management systems
Sun acquired MySQL AB, the developer of the MySQL
MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...
database in 2008 for US$1 billion. CEO Jonathan Schwartz mentioned in his blog that optimizing the performance of MySQL was one of the priorities of the acquisition. In February 2008, Sun began to publish results of the MySQL performance optimization work. Sun contributed to the PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL ( ) also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...
project. On the Java platform, Sun contributed to and supported Java DB.
Other software
Sun offered other software products for software development and infrastructure services. Many were developed in house; others came from acquisitions, including Tarantella, Waveset Technologies, SeeBeyond, and Vaau. Sun acquired many of the Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...
non-browser software products as part a deal involving Netscape's merger with AOL. These software products were initially offered under the "iPlanet" brand; once the Sun-Netscape alliance ended, they were re-branded as " Sun ONE" (Sun Open Network Environment), and then the " Sun Java System".
Sun's middleware product was branded as the ''Java Enterprise System'' (JES), and marketed for web and application serving, communication, calendaring, directory, identity management and service-oriented architecture
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. SOA is a good choice for system integration. By consequence, it is also applied in the field ...
. Sun's Open ESB and other software suites were available free of charge on systems running Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, HP-UX
HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...
, and Windows, with support available optionally.
Sun developed data center management software products, which included the '' Solaris Cluster'' high availability software, and a grid management package called '' Sun Grid Engine'' and firewall software such as SunScreen.
For Network Equipment Providers and telecommunications customers, Sun developed the Sun Netra High-Availability Suite.
Sun produced compilers and development tools under the '' Sun Studio'' brand, for building and developing Solaris and Linux applications.
Sun entered the software as a service
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...
(SaaS) market with zembly, a social cloud-based computing platform
A computing platform, digital platform, or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction, the ''summation of the requi ...
and Project Kenai, an open-source project hosting service.
Storage
Sun 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 (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 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 platform in 2008 built with open source technologies.
In late 2008 Sun announced the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage systems (codenamed Amber Road). Transparent placement of data in the systems' solid-state drive
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk.
SSDs rely on non- ...
s (SSD) and conventional hard drives was managed by ZFS
ZFS (previously Zettabyte File System) is a file system with Volume manager, volume management capabilities. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris (operating system), Solaris operating system in 2001. Large parts of Solaris, includin ...
to take advantage of the speed of SSDs and the economy of conventional hard disks.
Other storage products included Sun Fire X4500 storage server and SAM-QFS filesystem and storage management software.
High-performance computing
Sun marketed the Sun Constellation System for high-performance computing
High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems.
Overview
HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...
(HPC). Even before the introduction of the Sun Constellation System in 2007, Sun's products were in use in many of the TOP500
The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...
systems and supercomputing centers:
* Lustre was used by seven of the top 10 supercomputers in 2008, as well as other industries that need high-performance storage: six major oil companies (including BP, Shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
, and ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational List of oil exploration and production companies, oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the Successors of Standard Oil, largest direct s ...
), chip-design (including Synopsys
Synopsys, Inc. is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Synopsys sup ...
and Sony
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...
), and the movie-industry (including Harry Potter
''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven Fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...
and Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a superhero in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appearance, first appeared in the anthology comic book ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 (August 1962) in ...
).
* Sun Fire X4500 was used by high-energy physics supercomputers to run dCache
* Sun Grid Engine was a popular workload scheduler for clusters and computer farms
* Sun Visualization System allowed users of the TeraGrid to remotely access the 3D rendering capabilities of the ''Maverick'' system at the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
* Sun Modular Datacenter (Project Blackbox) was two Sun MD S20 units used by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,
is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, Ca ...
The ''Sun HPC ClusterTools'' product was a set of Message Passing Interface
The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a portable message-passing standard designed to function on parallel computing architectures. The MPI standard defines the syntax and semantics of library routines that are useful to a wide range of use ...
(MPI) 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, and donated engineering resources to the Open MPI project.
Sun was a participant in the OpenMP
OpenMP is an application programming interface (API) that supports multi-platform shared-memory multiprocessing programming in C, C++, and Fortran, on many platforms, instruction-set architectures and operating systems, including Solaris, ...
language committee. Sun Studio compilers and tools implemented 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 (TACC) in 2007. Ranger had a peak performance of over 500 TFLOPS, and was the sixth-most-powerful supercomputer on the TOP500 list in November 2008.
Sun announced an OpenSolaris distribution that integrated Sun's HPC products with others.
Staff
Notable Sun employees included John Gilmore, Whitfield Diffie
Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie ForMemRS (born June 5, 1944) is an American cryptographer and mathematician and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography along with Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle. Diffie and Hellman's 1976 paper ''New Dire ...
, Radia Perlman, Ivan Sutherland, Marc Tremblay, and Satya Nadella
Satya Narayana Nadella (; born 19 August 1967) is an Indian-born American business executive who is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014 as CEO and John W. Thompson in 2021 as chairman. B ...
. Sun was an early advocate of Unix-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. James Gosling
James Arthur Gosling (born 19 May 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java (programming language), Java programming language.
Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of E ...
led the team which developed the Java programming language
Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...
. Jon Bosak led the creation of the XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...
specification at W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
.
In 2005, Sun Microsystems was one of the first Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...
companies that instituted a formal social media
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...
program. Sun staff published articles on the company's blog site. Staff were encouraged to use the site to blog on any aspect of their work or personal life, with few restrictions placed on staff, other than commercially confidential material. Jonathan I. Schwartz was one of the first CEOs of large companies to regularly blog; his postings were frequently quoted and analyzed in the press.
See also
* Callan Data Systems
* Curriki#History
* Hackathon
A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of '' hacking'' and ''marathon'') is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 h ...
* Liberty Alliance
* List of computer system manufacturers
A Computer, computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the Computer hardware, hardware, operating system (main software), and the means to use peripheral equipment needed and used for full or mostly full operation. Such systems ...
* Open Source University Meetup
* Solbourne Computer
* Sun Certified Professional
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
* Post-merge web site (removed in February 2021).
* A weekly third-party summary of news about Sun and its products published since 1998.
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