The Official Site for Breaking News and the Latest Information from Sun On The Record

Sun and Microsoft announced several developments this week in our work to make it easier for customers to use our software and servers together in virtual environments. We also showed off some demos at Microsoft’s 'Get Virtual Now' customer event in Bellevue, Wash. on Monday. 

Here are the highlights:

- The Sun xVM Server, a datacenter-grade hypervisor, will be validated to work with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and prior versions.
- Sun and Microsoft are working together to offer customers the Solaris OS as a certified guest on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
- Sun is providing Sun Ray thin client customers the ability to access Windows as a guest OS running on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

These announcements build on Sun’s current work with Microsoft. As a Windows Server OEM, Sun sells and supports Windows Server products on certified x64 servers and blades and offers Windows Server utilities and value-added software. Sun also provides solutions to enable major TCO savings for customers, such as Sun's Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server.

In addition, Sun and Microsoft plan to integrate Sun xVM Ops Center with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. This will mean that Sun customers will be able to use a single management framework to manage their choice of operating systems from Solaris and Windows to Linux as well as monitor physical and virtual environments.

Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President of Infrastructure Server Marketing at Microsoft (right) and Lisa Sieker, Vice President of Systems Marketing at Sun Microsystems (left) celebrate the launch of the Sun-Microsoft Interoperability Center. Redmond, Wash., March 10, 2008.

Sun Laboratories' focus on open source projects continues to dovetail with open source community efforts, this time on the gaming front with Project Darkstar. For those of you who may not be familiar with Project Darkstar, it is a a software infrastructure designed to simplify the development and operation of massively scalable online games, virtual worlds and social networking applications, Sun's partner and active community contributor fatfoogoo, which provides in-game commerce ecosystems, announced today that it will offer micropayment software through Project Darkstar. Fatfoogoo is the first company to design commercial billing and transaction software to work explicitly with the Project Darkstar technology. Having the fatfoogoo software available through Project Darkstar will make it easier for game developers to add payment capabilities to their games – letting players make “micropayments” to each other, or to the game publisher. Read more about fatfoogoo’s work with Project Darkstar .

Once again, Java developers & evangelists from Sun will be heading to Antwerp, Belgium this December 8-12 to participate as a Premium Partner of the 2008 DeVoxx Conference.

DeVoxx - formerly known as JavaPolis, is put on by the Belgian Java User Group & is one of the largest Java developer events in the world. It's truly a fantastic event where Java developers can mix & mingle with technical luminaries - not to mention a great chance to eat Belgian french fries & stock up on chocolate!

As a Premium Partner of DeVoxx, Sun will once again have a keynote slot at the event plus several expanded technical sessions. Since we've got Java SE 6 Update 10 on the horizon & JavaFX is due this fall - you can bet that Sun will have a LOT to talk about with the Java community. We'll be working up some killer demos as well!

Why the name change?

As everyone knows, Sun does own the trademark for Java. By having an independent name, the DeVoxx conference organizers are able to take the conference in whatever direction they choose. You can hear from Stephan more about DeVoxx and the name change. Regardless of what it's called, you can be sure the Java community will be in attendance! Registration is open now - http://www.devoxx.com .

See you in Belgium!