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Last April, in what was one of 2004's biggest surprises witnessed by the computer industry, Sun and Microsoft appeared together in San Francisco to announce a 10-year collaboration agreement along with a $1.95 billion payment from Microsoft to Sun to settle outstanding legal issues.

This May, Sun and Microsoft got together again — this time in Palo Alto — to host a press conference on the status of our agreement and specifically to demonstrate the first results of our collaboration: a pair of single-sign-on protocols that allow users to log on to Microsoft's Active Directory and gain access to resources requiring a Sun Java Enterprise System (JES) Directory Server logon, and vice versa. The two protocols recognize the identification and authentication measures of both Microsoft's WS-Federation and the Liberty Alliance, to which we belong.

For those who predicted a year ago that our two companies would never agree on the shape of the negotiating table much less anything of substance, it was a decidedly surprising moment.

Not that it was easy. Just the opposite, in fact. There were times when it looked like centrifugal force or the two companies' autoimmune systems were going to hurl us apart. It took a good six months to agree on our goals and to work out a common language of engagement. We were very fortunate, though, that both Sun and Microsoft had very strong teams working on these issues with excellent leadership from Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, and from Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer.

In order to prioritize our efforts, we assembled a technical advisory council with 10 of our largest mutual customers and developed a list of pain points some or all of them have experienced. Near the top of everyone's list was identity management and reducing the number of passwords that users have to remember to access disparate systems and applications. Hence our decision to tackle this issue first.

Now, I grant you that the sight of Sun engineer Pat Patterson logging into Microsoft apps through a Sun Directory Server console is not the most spellbinding demo we've ever done, particularly when we followed with Microsoft engineer Don Schmidt showing the process in reverse, but this is a real problem with real, substantial hard dollar costs for businesses everywhere. Fred Killeen, who is director of systems development and chief technology officer for General Motors, joined us at the demo and explained it this way:

Killeen is certain single sign-on will help reduce his Help Desk costs and help reduce some of his current management overhead. And, with estimates for the cost of a password reset running as high as $150 per event, he's right. Single sign-on is also a huge improvement in security because it eliminates the burden — and the challenge — of maintaining current local accounts in each domain.

One of the most exciting elements of this relationship is that Sun has licensed Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and plans to quickly implement it for use with our Sun Ray thin client product line in the near future. This would enable Sun Ray clients to access Windows Terminal Services running on Windows Server 2003. As a result, customers will be able to not only centralize computing but potentially replace some Windows PCs as well. We believe the combination of Sun Rays and RDP could be a very viable alternative to PCs.

A nice complement to Sun's licensing of the Remote Desktop Protocol is our recent acquisition of Tarantella. Now Sun is able to deliver any application — Solaris, Windows, mainframe, AS/400 — to any device or client. This technical capability delivers on Java's vision of any time, anywhere, any device. Organizations have been asking for the ability to access and manage information, data, and applications across all platforms, networks, and devices and now Sun can provide that. The Tarantella capabilities, combined with RDP, provide the OS-agnostic solution that the market has been asking for.

All of these elements add up to Sun's ability to have a great desktop alternative that will be a direct competitor to the Intel/Dell model. An important point to remember about our new relationship: Sun and Microsoft are still competitors — and fierce ones at that. Moving forward, Sun is developing a better way to do Windows and will prove that our technology is superior for customers in both the enterprise and consumer space. We will demonstrate to the world that the Solaris OS is and will always be a better alternative than Windows, that writing to Java has and will continue to make more sense than supporting .NET, and finally that Java Enterprise System is hands-down the best Web services stack in the market. We didn't sing "Kumbaya" or hug at our latest get-together. Instead, we're cooperating and still competing because it makes business sense for both of us and because it's what our customers like General Motors want from us.

And, of course, single sign-on wasn't the only thing of note; the two companies are collaborating on systems management to enable deep interoperability between the Sun and Microsoft operating systems and management products. As part of this effort, the companies are collaborating on the development of the WS-Management a Web services specification, that defines a single protocol to meet management requirements spanning hardware devices, operating systems, and applications. There's still a good, long list of projects for the two companies to tackle. We have delivered on making our storage software and hardware cross-compatible; on an integrated systems management application for Solaris and Windows Server 2003; Web services standards for messaging and event-tracking; and Windows terminal services that let PCs perform like thin clients.

In describing our relationship, Gartner said, "Over a year has passed since Microsoft and Sun agreed to stop battling and work together for the common good." So today customers are patting both companies on the back and saying, "Great first steps... when do we get to see more?"

Stay tuned. You'll need to keep your eyes out for when McNealy and Ballmer are coming to a town near you to announce our next joint achievements.