Highlights

Sun has maintained binary compatibility between operating system releases for nearly a decade, enabling existing Solaris applications to run unmodified on Solaris 10. This means that Solaris applications developed ten years ago will run on Solaris 10 unchanged, taking full advantage of new and advanced Solaris features. With Solaris 10, Sun now guarantees source code compatibility between SPARC and x86 processors, ensuring applications can run across platforms with a simple recompile.

• Guaranteed application compatibility from release to release of Solaris
• Guaranteed application compatibility between x86 and SPARC platforms
• According to a Sun customer, binary compatibility in Solaris translates to lower development, testing, and deployment costs.

Solaris Binary Application Guarantee Program

The Solaris Application Guarantee reflects Sun's confidence in the compatibility of applications from one release of Solaris to the next and is designed to make re-qualification—let alone porting—a thing of the past.

If an application runs on Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 or 9, it will run on Solaris 10, even if it has not been recompiled for Solaris 10—guaranteed. Binary compatibility between releases of Solaris helps protect your long term investment in the development, training and skills development for your applications.

If an application experiences compatibility problems when running on the Solaris 10 Operating System, Sun will analyze the problem and provide the appropriate remedy as set forth in the Solaris Application Guarantee Program Terms and Conditions.

Solaris Source Code Guarantee Program

It's unusual to find an operating system with a thriving partner community for more than one system architecture. Part of what makes this a reality for the Solaris Operating System is because Sun truly backs the concept of choice. Sun makes it easy for developers to build, test and support the same applications for SPARC, x64 and x86 platforms.

Sun's Solaris Source Code Guarantee provides the assurance that if you develop and successfully compile C and C++ applications to run on SPARC or x86 platforms, these applications will successfully compile and run on either of these platforms.

If you have a 64-bit application that runs on SPARC-based platforms, it can be easily recompiled to run on x64 platforms. If an application meets the program guidelines and does not recompile, Sun will analyze the problem and provide the appropriate remedy as set forth in the Solaris Application Guarantee Program Terms and Conditions.

Through Sun's unwavering commitment to choice, you can confidently develop and deploy applications on whatever platform best suits your customers' needs now and into the future. SPARC, x64, x86—standardize on just one or use them all. If you change your mind down the road, no problem.

• More on Platform Support for Solaris