Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems was an American technology company that designed, developed, and sold computer hardware, software, and services. Founded in 1982 by Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy, the company was a pioneer in Unix-based workstations and servers, and it created several influential technologies including the SPARC microprocessor architecture, the Solaris operating system, and the Java programming language. In 2010, Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation for about $7.4 billion.
History
Sun Microsystems was incorporated on February 24, 1982. Its early products included the Sun-1 and Sun-2 workstations, which were built using Motorola 68000 processors and ran the SunOS operating system. In 1987, Sun introduced the SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) RISC-based processor, which became the foundation for its server line. During the 1990s, Sun grew rapidly as the Internet boom drove demand for its high-performance servers and the cross-platform Java platform (first released in 1995). The company also developed Network File System (NFS), the Network Information Service (NIS), and the ZFS file system.
In the 2000s, Sun faced intense competition from lower-cost x86 servers and from Linux-based systems. Despite efforts to refocus on open source software (including releasing OpenSolaris and OpenOffice.org), the company's financial performance declined. Following the dot-com bubble burst, Sun posted several quarters of losses and underwent multiple restructuring rounds. In April 2009, Oracle announced its intent to acquire Sun; the deal closed in January 2010.
Products and technologies
- Hardware: SPARC-based servers and workstations; Sun Fire and Sun Enterprise server lines; Sun Blade and Ultra workstations; storage systems such as Sun StorageTek.
- Operating systems: Solaris (derived from SunOS); OpenSolaris (open source variant).
- Software: Java platform and Java Virtual Machine; NFS; NIS; ZFS; OpenOffice.org; NetBeans IDE.
- Cloud and web infrastructure: Sun Cloud (early cloud computing platform); GlassFish application server.
Sun was also a key contributor to the development of the Internet protocol suite and the World Wide Web, and its engineers played roles in creating NFS and the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).
Legacy
Sun's technologies remain widely used. Java is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, SPARC processors power Oracle's high-end servers, and Solaris continues to be developed by Oracle (though its market share has declined). Many of Sun's software projects have been contributed to open source communities, including OpenOffice.org (now Apache OpenOffice) and NetBeans.