Sun Microsystems and Intel revealed their long-term, mutual commitments to each other’s technologies today by way of a strategic alliance centered on Intel's endorsement of the Solaris operating system and Sun's commitment to ship its family of enterprise and telecommunications servers and workstations built with Intel Xeon processors inside.

In addition to an alliance that covers the Solaris operating system, NetBeans software and Intel’s Xeon processors, the agreement includes joint engineering, design and marketing efforts.

Intel will embrace Solaris as a mainstream operating system and UNIX for its Xeon processor-based servers. Intel also will actively support the OpenSolaris and open Java communities from which they continue to evolve.

Sun will begin offering platforms based on Intel Architecture—optimized for Solaris—beginning in the first half of 2007. Sun believes Intel's model of alternating new microarchitectures with new process technologies annually will provide better building blocks for Sun's customers. It also will help Sun make good on its commitment to lead the industry in performance and energy efficiency.

Sun servers and workstations will include Intel-based uni-processors, dual-processors and multi-processors. The companies also will collaborate on four or more processor scale-up systems optimized for the Solaris OS.

Jonathan Schwartz, president and CEO of Sun, said he was excited about Intel's long term Xeon road map and the performance his company has seen with Solaris and Sun Java on the Xeon platforms. “Intel's endorsement for and agreement to OEM Solaris opens markets for both of us across the world,” he said.

Intel will distribute and support the Solaris OS. Together they will encourage independent software vendors and systems providers to expand their offerings for Solaris on Intel-based systems. The Solaris platform is supported by more than 2000 ISVs on over 800 platforms.