Sun Microsystems

Since the company's inception in 1982 in Palo Alto, California, a singular vision--"The Network Is The Computer"--has propelled Sun Microsystems to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software, and services. Cofounder and CEO Scott McNealy, along with Chief Scientist Bill Joy, run this popular company, which is known by many as simply "Sun." James Gosling developed Java, an object-oriented language that resolves several of the World Wide Web's programming and functionality problems. Gosling, regarded by some as "the world's greatest living programmer," originally designed Java for use in interactive TV. Believing the interactive TV market to be a dead end, Sun decided to use this technology on the Web. Java programs allow animation to appear in Web browsers, background music to play, and text to scroll across the screen in real time, just to name a few things.

The company develops chips, boards, desktop systems, network connectivity, network storage solutions, servers, peripherals, and more, as well as a wide range of software solutions, including Web development tools, e-commerce solutions, operating environments and platforms, peer-to-peer network software, storage, and systems management tools.

Sun continues to hold to its vision: A vision of computers that talk to each other, no matter who built them; a vision in which technology works for you, not the other way around. While others protect their proprietary, stand-alone architectures, Sun is focused on taking companies into the network age, providing systems and software with the scalability and reliability needed to drive the electronic marketplace.