Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems logo

Sun-1 Badge

Sun Microsystems 1980s logo

Sun Microsystems logo

Meta HQ 2023

Sun Agnews Campus Bldgs 21 22

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was an American company that sold computers, computer components, software, and IT services. It was founded on February 24, 1982, by Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy. The company was headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in the Silicon Valley. Sun Microsystems was instrumental in the development of several key technologies and is best known for its contributions to the network computing landscape, including the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, the Network File System (NFS), and the SPARC processor architecture.

History

Sun Microsystems' history is marked by its commitment to open standards and open source software. The company's name, Sun, stood for "Stanford University Network," reflecting the founders' origins at Stanford University. Sun was initially known for its workstation products, which were systems designed for technical and scientific applications. These workstations were some of the first to use the UNIX operating system in a commercial product, significantly contributing to UNIX's popularity in academia and industry.

In the 1990s, Sun Microsystems became a leading advocate for networked computing, coining the phrase "The network is the computer." This vision was ahead of its time, predicting the importance of the internet and networked services in everyday computing.

One of Sun's most significant contributions to the IT industry was the development of the Java programming language in 1995. Java's "write once, run anywhere" capability made it incredibly popular for web development and enterprise applications, fundamentally changing software development practices.

Sun also developed the Solaris operating system, a UNIX-based OS known for its scalability, reliability, and security features. Solaris was widely used in enterprise environments and supported Sun's SPARC and x86-64 architecture servers.

Acquisition by Oracle

On April 20, 2009, Oracle Corporation announced its intention to acquire Sun Microsystems. The deal was completed on January 27, 2010, for approximately $7.4 billion. The acquisition integrated Sun's software and hardware systems with Oracle's products, particularly focusing on the Java platform, which Oracle aimed to further develop and integrate with its software offerings.

Legacy

Sun Microsystems left a lasting legacy in the IT world. Its commitment to open standards and open source projects had a significant influence on the industry. Sun was a major contributor to the open-source movement, with initiatives such as the release of the Solaris operating system as open-source software under the CDDL license and its involvement in the OpenOffice.org project.

The company's technologies, particularly Java and Solaris, continue to be widely used. Java remains one of the world's most popular programming languages, and Solaris is still in use in certain enterprise environments, although its popularity has waned since the acquisition by Oracle.

Products and Technologies

• Java – A programming language and computing platform first released by Sun in 1995.
• Solaris – A UNIX-based operating system developed by Sun.
• SPARC – A RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) processor architecture developed by Sun.
• Network File System (NFS) – A distributed file system protocol developed by Sun to allow user access to files over a network similar to local storage access.
• Sun workstations and servers – High-performance computing systems for enterprise applications.

See Also

• Oracle Corporation
• UNIX
• Open source
• Network computing