Sun Microsystems: A Complete History
Sun Microsystems built the workstations, chips and software that ran much of the early internet, then disappeared into Oracle. This video follows the company from its first day to its last.
In 1980, Stanford graduate student Andy Bechtolsheim designed a networked workstation. On 24 February 1982 he founded Sun Microsystems with fellow students Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy; Bill Joy, a lead author of Berkeley's BSD Unix, joined soon after and brought BSD into Sun's first operating system, SunOS.
Sun sold Unix workstations to engineers and scientists, turned a profit in its first quarter, and went public in 1986. In 1984 it released the Network File System and gave the design away, making it a Unix industry standard. From 1985 it built its own SPARC processor, launching the SPARCstation 1 in April 1989 at $9,000.
A 1987 pact with AT&T to merge BSD and System V into SVR4 set off the 'Unix wars'; by 1993 Sun's own SunOS had moved onto System V-derived Solaris. In 1991 engineer James Gosling's Green Project, first called Oak, became Java by 1995, announced with the slogan 'write once, run anywhere.'
Through the 1990s, Sun's SPARC servers running Solaris powered much of the commercial web, and by 2000 its 'We're the dot in .com' ad campaign advertised that dominance, with its stock near $250 a share. The 2001 dot-com crash sent the stock below $10 within two years, forcing deep job cuts and a new slogan, 'Take it to the Nth.'
Sun's recovery bets included OpenSolaris and ZFS (2005-06) and buying MySQL for about $1 billion (2008), under new CEO Jonathan Schwartz. It was not enough: on 20 April 2009 Oracle agreed to buy Sun for $9.50 a share, about $7.4 billion, completing the deal on 27 January 2010. Java, NFS, ZFS and the Solaris BSD/System V lineage all continued inside Oracle and the open-source world long after.
No figure appears without its date and source.
Educational documentary. Not financial or investment advice.
In these topics
Tags
Chapters
- A network in a box, 1980-1982
- Bill Joy and the BSD inheritance
- Selling workstations to engineers, 1982-1984
- NFS and the networked desktop, 1984
- SPARC: building its own chips, 1985-1989
- The Unix wars and the System V switch, 1987-1993
- Java: write once, run anywhere, 1991-1995
- Powering the early web, mid-1990s
- 'We're the dot in .com': the dot-com peak, 1998-2000
- The crash and the long decline, 2001-2006
- Late bets: open source and new leadership, 2002-2009
- The Oracle takeover, 2009-2010
- What outlived Sun
Sources and credits
Photo credits (Wikimedia Commons)
- Stanford University Main Quad, 1925: Staff, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALeRoy_Abrams_Stanford_Quad_1925.jpg
- University of California, Berkeley - Soda Hall (home of the Berkeley computer science department, source of BSD Unix): D Coetzee, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAbacus_at_Soda_Hall%2C_UC_Berkeley.jpg
- Sun Microsystems headquarters at the Agnews Development Center, Santa Clara, California: User:Finlay McWalter, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWfm_sun_agnews.jpg
- Sun SPARCstation 1 workstation, 1989: Fourdee at English Wikipedia, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASPARCstation_1.jpg
Primary sources
- Wikipedia, 'Sun Microsystems' () - founding 24 Feb 1982; founders; Stanford University Network workstation; profitable first quarter; 1986 IPO.
- Wikipedia, 'SunOS' () - BSD heritage; SunOS 4.1.4 (1993) as last BSD release; Solaris as System V-derived successor.
- Wikipedia, 'Unix wars' () - 1987 AT&T-Sun SVR4 pact; Open Software Foundation formed 1988.
- Wikipedia, 'SPARC' and 'SPARCstation 1' () - SPARC from 1987, Sun-4; SPARCstation 1 announced 12 April 1989.
- Wikipedia, 'Network File System' () - released 1984, placed in the public domain, NFS Connectathon 1986.
- landley.net mirror of Sun Microsystems company history, 'sun-history.html' () - founding detail, SPARCstation 1 pricing and unit sales, 1986 IPO.
- i-Programmer, 'Java Turns 30' () - Green Project 1991, Oak renamed Java, SunWorld announcement 23 May 1995.
- Salon, 'The Dot-cominator', 26 January 2000 () - 'We're the dot in.com' campaign, ten ads, $100m+ planned spend.
- HPCwire, 'Sun's McNealy Moves Forward into Next Era', 10 May 2002, and Computerworld, 'Sun ditches its dot in dot com slogan' () - 'Take it to the Nth' slogan change.
- eWeek, 'McNealy Out as Sun CEO, Schwartz In', and Sun Microsystems Form 8-K, SEC EDGAR, April 2006 () - Jonathan Schwartz CEO effective 24 April 2006.
- eWeek, 'Sun Completes $1B Buyout of MySQL', February 2008 () - MySQL deal agreed Jan 2008, closed Feb 2008.
- Sun Microsystems Form 8-K and press release, SEC EDGAR, 20 April 2009; TechCrunch, 'Oracle To Buy Sun For Approximately $7.4 Billion', 20 April 2009 () - deal terms, $9.50/share.
- TechCrunch, 'EU Approves $7.4 Billion Deal Between Oracle And Sun', 21 January 2010 () - EU antitrust clearance.
- Wikipedia, 'Acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation' () - deal completion 27 January 2010; post-acquisition fate of Java, NFS, ZFS, Solaris.
Not regulated financial advice.