The rise and fall of Sun Microsystems

Sun was a tech juggernaut for nearly three decades. Our memorial slideshow gives this former titan its due.

  • 1

    In memoriam: Sun Microsystems

  • 2

    Present at the creation (1982)

  • 3

    Not a pizza box (1982)

  • 4

    The network is the computer (1984)

  • 5

    Sparc: Making RISC commercially successful (1989)

  • 6

    Solaris rising (1991)

  • 7

    Java takes the stage (1995)

  • 8

    Sun sues Microsoft (1997)

  • 9

    "We put the dot in dot com" (1999-2001)

  • 10

    Every which way but up (2002-2004)

  • 11

    Andy Bechtolsheim returns (2004)

  • 12

    Schwartz takes the throne (2006)

  • 13

    Sun buys MySQL (2008)

  • 14

    Oracle buys Sun

In memoriam: Sun Microsystems

On the cusp of Sun's $7.4 billion acquisition by Oracle, InfoWorld looks back at the company's auspicious beginnings and rocky life span.

SLIDE 1 OF 14
April 24, 2009
gkroeger 24-Apr-09 9:24am

Slide 5 is a bit misleading. Workstations with SPARC processors were available before the SparcStation 1. I bought several in early 1988. They were deskside units. The Sparcstation 1 was a breakthrough in price and packaging.

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