PRESS
RELEASE
SUN ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF SOLARIS OPENSTEP AND
WORKSHOP OPENSTEP BETA
Meets Customer Demand For Operating System
and Object-based Development Environment
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA. July 22,
1996 - SunSoft, Inc., the Internet
software company, announced today that it has delivered the beta release of its
SolarisTM OpenStepTM operating environment and WorkShopTM OpenStep development
environment products. These products are Solaris implementations of the open,
portable object standard specification jointly created by SunSoft and NeXT
Software, Inc.
"Solaris OpenStep and WorkShop OpenStep are a marriage of
two very promising things," says Alex B. Cone, first vice president of the
Development Services Organization at Lehman Brothers in New York. "It provides a
fabulous development environment on top of a widely-used operating system." Any
application written for Solaris OpenStep can be deployed on OpenStep for other
platforms, he notes, and developing in the Solaris OpenStep environment allows
the user to easily support a large variety of corporate
networks.
"Solaris OpenStep provides developers a mature, robust,
field-tested environment for serious object-based application development,"
explains Steve MacKay, vice president and general manager of Solaris products.
"Any application written using OpenStep is a full citizen in the Sun
environment. That means you can simultaneously run today's 10,000 available
Solaris applications, OpenStep applications, and Java applications on the same
machine."
The SunSoft OpenStep product line includes the Solaris OpenStep
operating environment and the WorkShop OpenStep development environment. Solaris
OpenStep applications co-exist with applications running in the Solaris Common
Desktop Environment (CDE), JavaTM programming language, OpenWindowsTM user
environment, WabiTM API translation software and the Macintosh Application
Environment (MAE). Underlying these products is Solaris, the most scalable,
reliable and secure enterprise and Internet/intranet operating environment for
SPARC and Intel platforms. WorkShop OpenStep is unparalleled for offering the
most comprehensive, graphical programmer productivity tools for "snapping
together" new applications from pre-built components.
Sun Microsystems,
Inc. expanded its product offering to the object community through its recent
acquisition of Lighthouse Design, Inc., the largest and most successful
independent systems vendor in the OpenStep market.
"The OpenStep
initiative is now a reality," said Mitch Mandich, vice president of worldwide
sales, NeXT Software. "We are pleased to have SunSoft embrace our applications
development technology for the Enterprise and the Internet. By completing the
joint initiative, we are making OpenStep available to the mainstream,
object-oriented application development market."
The OpenStep
specification is based on NeXT's object-oriented application layer found in
NEXTSTEP. The Solaris OpenStep and WorkShop OpenStep products for SPARC are
scheduled to ship in late Q3 of 1996. In order to offer customers complete
freedom in selecting client/desktop environments, the SunSoft OpenStep product
line will be delivered separately from the Solaris NEOTM object product
offering. OpenStep is compatible with the currently shipping NEO products,
available separately, for those customers who wish to use both Solaris OpenStep
and NEO.
SunSoft, Inc.
SunSoft, Inc. is the leading
provider of Internet management, access, application development and platform
software. SunSoft's products, designed for information technology professionals,
systems integrators value added resellers, and computer manufacturers, are used
to deliver Internet, network, and desktop computing systems that improve a
company's internal and customer communications, and lets them quickly adapt to
business change. The products are licensed and distributed through computer
manufacturers and resellers worldwide. SunSoft is a subsidiary of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. For more information, visit SunSoft's website
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Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, SunSoft, Solaris, OpenWindows,
Java, Wabi, Workshop and NEO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. OpenStep is a
trademark or registered trademark of NeXT Software, Inc., in the United States
and other countries, used under license. All SPARC trademarks are used under
license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc.
in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are
based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.