Sun Microsystems Superseded
Sun Microsystems
KindCompany
Founded1982
Defunct2010
StatusSuperseded
FoundersBechtolsheim, Khosla, Joy & McNealy
FieldWorkstations
Sourcebitsavers.org ↗
Stanford University Network — SPARC, NFS, Java, 'the network is the computer.' The dot-com rise and bust in one company; absorbed by Oracle in 2010.
1960198020002020
Created by Bill Joy
Acquired by Oracle Corporation
Vinod Khosla convinced Andy Bechtolsheim to commercialize his Stanford Network workstation in February 1982; Bill Joy and Scott McNealy joined immediately. Sun shipped workstations running Unix with TCP/IP built in — 'the network is the computer' — and NFS made file servers real.
SPARC workstations, then servers riding the dot-com boom, made Sun briefly the fourth-largest tech company. Java (1995) was its most lasting export. The crash destroyed the business; Oracle bought Sun in 2010 for $7.4 billion — mostly for Java and Solaris.