Feature Story
|
A new era of agreement.Sun and Microsoft join forces to better serve their customers. 11.May.04--As part of the landmark agreement announced last month, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Microsoft are focusing new attention on deeply integrating products and technologies, so customers will have less work to do to support heterogeneous IT environments. Three things happened on April 2, 2004 to further that goal:
The new relationship between Sun and Microsoft means more choices for customers and greater reach for innovative Sun products and technologies. Sun and Microsoft recognize each other's strengths. Windows software is nearly ubiquitous on PCs, and Windows Server software has a growing presence in enterprise data centers, providing edge and file/print services. Sun is well established as a builder of mission-critical business infrastructures and a key partner for network computing. Sun has also been on the forefront of interoperability with Java technology (used by 3 million developers) and with a host of open standards initiatives and open source projects. Sun and Microsoft will continue to compete, but we'll also work to make sure that our development tracks are complementary, so our mutual customers will end up with products that work together well--on the desktop and in the data center.
Java Technology and WindowsThe collaboration agreement allows each company to access information, technical assistance, and tools, enabling respective development teams to deliver products that easily share information. That means useful communication between desktops and back-end systems and between tiers in a mixed-server environment. "What many people don't know is that Sun and Microsoft products already interoperate well in several areas," says Larry Singer, Sun vice president, Global Information Systems Strategy Office. "Now we begin the work of integrating Sun's products more seamlessly with Microsoft's, further reducing the interoperability burdens that customers must shoulder." At Sun, we have a wealth of experience building and engineering heterogeneous solutions. Our server, software, and storage systems interact with competing third-party systems through a range of open industry standards, including SOAP, WSDL, and XML. We've also invested heavily in integrating the Sun Java Enterprise System software with a wide range of Microsoft software components, from Outlook e-mail to Windows Server applications. Sun offers three products designed to support Microsoft applications without requiring any changes to familiar applications or interfaces.
These are not the only examples of Sun/Microsoft interoperability. For instance, the Sun Java System Portal Server can serve Microsoft applications and content, and Sun StorEdge systems are certified by Microsoft for use with Windows servers. Staying the CourseSun has been designing our products to interoperate with third-party products, including Microsoft's, for many years. Today, Sun's servers interact seamlessly with many desktops, devices, and back-end systems. Our line of x86 servers, based on the Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processor architectures, is currently being certified to run Windows. In this way, we're giving our customers a choice of operating environments--the Solaris OS (x86 Platform Edition), Linux, or Windows--to meet a range of needs. We're also preparing a program to help developers bridge the differences between Sun's Java platform and Microsoft's .NET development environment. Although there's a lot of work to do before we can reveal the details, we're building a solution that strikes a balance between protecting current investments in skills, code, and systems, and streamlining future development with faster definition and adoption of Web services standards. In other plans in the development arena, we're targeting directory, messaging, and database applications as areas for future collaboration. As our collaborative relationship with Microsoft grows and bears fruit, look for details about these products and programs. In the meantime, we'll keep doing all the great things you've come to expect from Sun:
Through the numerous challenges and opportunities ahead, Sun will stick to our principles and keep our focus on reducing the cost and complexity of IT. With a new technology partner at our side, Sun is better positioned than ever to solve customer problems. | |||||||||||||
 | | | ||||||||||||
