January 23, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Technology companies Sun Microsystems (sun.com) and Intel (intel.com) announced on Monday they have formed a broad strategic alliance centered on Intel's endorsement of the Solaris operating system and Sun delivering a family of enterprise and telecommunications servers and workstations based on Intel Xeon processors.
The scope of the agreement spans the Solaris, Java and NetBeans software and Intel Xeon microprocessors, as well as other Intel and Sun enterprise-class technologies. The alliance also includes joint engineering, design and marketing efforts, says Sun.
As part of the deal, Intel has signed a Solaris OEM agreement enabling Intel to distribute and support the Solaris OS to its customers as market opportunities may arise and consistent with Intel's product strategies. Sun says the two companies will strongly encourage independent software vendors and system providers to expand their offerings for Solaris on Intel-based systems and Intel will support Sun in its efforts to optimize applications for Solaris on Intel Xeon processor based systems.
"We're excited about Intel's long term Xeon road map and the performance we're seeing with Solaris and Sun Java on the Xeon platforms," says Jonathan Schwartz, president and CEO of Sun Microsystems. "And Intel's endorsement for and agreement to OEM Solaris opens markets for both of us across the world. This is truly a landmark relationship for the industry."
Sun recently announced that three new customers have deployed Sun Fire CoolThreads servers powered by the Solaris 10 operating system.
