Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was an American company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services, and that created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system , and the Network File System (NFS). Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them Unix, RISC processors, thin client computing, and virtualized computing. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California (part of Silicon Valley), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.

On January 27, 2010, Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation for US$7.4 billion, based on an agreement signed on April 20, 2009.

Sun products included computer servers and workstations built on its own RISC-based SPARC processor architecture as well as on x86-based AMD's Opteron and Intel's Xeon processors; storage systems; and a suite of software products including the Solaris operating system, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management applications. Other technologies include the Java platform, MySQL, and NFS. Sun was a proponent of open systems in general and Unix in particular, and a major contributor to open-source software. At various times, Sun had manufacturing facilities in several locations worldwide, including Hillsboro, Oregon, Linlithgow, Scotland, and Newark, California; however, by the time they were acquired, most actual manufacturing had been outsourced.