In recent years, the market for system devices and components is undergoing a drastic change and we can see a wide range of products from several companies being released into the market. All these devices may not support few platforms or operating systems. The customers would be interested to know the supported platforms for a particular device that they are purchasing. Hence few big enterprises provide certification programs for such hardware devices.
Solaris ecosystem that consists of the Solaris OS release plus the OpenSolaris OS release is the proven industry standard operating system with features designed to save your business time and money. System manufacturers who would like to tell their customers that their devices comply with the Solaris operating system, they need to certify their hardware devices as Solaris OS compatible.
Sun Microsystems Inc. has released Hardware Certification Test Suite (HCTS), by using which the system manufacturers can certify their devices as Solaris OS compatible. The HCTS application allows you to perform a series of tests based on the type of the hardware device. Devices that passes these tests are included in the Sun Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) as 'Certified'. It is also possible to add your hardware to the HCL without undertaking the HCTS test. But in this case, your hardware gains entry into the HCL with the 'Reported to Work' status.