Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems was an American technology company that developed Solaris, Java, and SPARC-based computer systems. Oracle acquired it in 2010.
UNIX: A family of multitasking, multiuser operating systems originating at Bell Labs in the 1970s. Sun built its operating systems on Unix foundations and helped shape the commercial Unix market.
Sun workstation: A high-performance desktop computer designed by Sun for technical and professional computing. Workstations brought Sun’s SPARC processors and Unix software directly to engineers and developers.
Andy Bechtolsheim: A German-American computer engineer and entrepreneur who designed Sun’s first workstation. His Stanford workstation design became the basis of Sun’s initial product.
Oracle Corporation: An American technology company specializing in database software, cloud services, and enterprise applications. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 and took control of its hardware and software portfolio.
Hewlett-Packard: An American technology company that sold enterprise servers, workstations, printers, and related products. HP competed with Sun in Unix servers and technical workstations.
SPARC: A RISC instruction-set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in 1987. SPARC supplied the processor architecture for many of Sun’s workstations and servers.
Sun server: A server computer made by Sun Microsystems for enterprise, scientific, and network workloads. Servers were the core hardware through which Sun delivered its computing systems to organizations.
Vinod Khosla: An Indian-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded Sun Microsystems. He helped establish Sun as a company and led its early business development.
Open-source software: Software whose source code is available under licenses permitting inspection, modification, and redistribution. Sun’s releases of Java and Solaris source code connected the company to open-source development.
IBM: An American technology company with major businesses in enterprise computing, software, and services. IBM’s systems and Unix offerings competed with Sun’s enterprise computing products.