joel@sundc.UUCP (Joel McClung - Federal TS Mgr Washington DC) (04/14/88)
SUN AND XEROX CONFIRM ALLIANCE, SIGN $200 MILLION AGREEMENT MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA April 11, 1988 Xerox Corporation and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced they have signed a definitive master agreement solidifying the technology alliance announced by the two companies in October 1987. Under the agreement, Xerox expects to purchase or manufacture more than $200 million of Sun products over the next five years. Separately, Sun and Xerox announced today a cross-licensing agreement in concert with AT&T's introduction of the OPEN LOOK graphical user interface for the UNIX System V operating system. The master agreement covers Xerox and its international affiliates, including Rank Xerox Limited, Xerox Canada Inc. and Fuji Xerox Company Limited. This agreement creates a cooperative relationship between Sun, Xerox and Fuji Xerox covering technology exchange, joint development and purchase and/or manufacture of Sun products. "This agreement is just the second step in what we are confident will be a strong, long-standing relationship with Sun," said Wayland R. Hicks, president of the Xerox Business Products and Systems Group. "Our customers and the industry in general, will benefit from the increased price/performance, functionality and interconnect capabilities that result from our shared vision of industry standards." Scott McNealy, Sun president and chief executive officer, said, "Document processing, like many other business areas, will have increasing freedom from restrictions imposed by proprietary vendor strategies as a result of Sun's technology alliance with Xerox. We're extremely pleased by the Xerox endorsement of SPARC technology and by the decision to incorporate SPARC systems from Sun into the Xerox document processing products and systems." Under the agreement, Sun will enhance the standard Sun Operating System (SunOS) to provide Xerox-requested features, including product-level support for Xerox Network Systems (XNS) standards, applications and multinational products. Both companies will offer SunOS and XNS to their customers as standard products. Xerox and Sun also have agreed to further cooperation in both technology and product development. The agreement on graphical user interface is an example of such cooperation. Further exchange of systems- and network-related technology will be announced as specific agreements are concluded. Xerox is buying current Sun products for internal research and development and for selected end-user applications. As announced last October, in two to three years from that date, Xerox expects to begin purchasing and/or manufacturing Sun components, workstations, servers and software based on the SPARC technology and the UNIX system. These will provide the next generation platform for Xerox for its document processing products and systems. The 32-bit SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) microprocessor is based on Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) technology, which is widely regarded as the highest performance microprocessor approach for the 1990's. The simplicity of the SPARC design makes it easily adaptable to a wide range of system designs and scalable to higher performance levels using faster semiconductor processes. The SPARC technology is designed to run AT&T's UNIX operating system and is viewed by a growing list of licensees and users as an ideal platform for developing and running UNIX system applications. Sun Microsystems, Inc., is the world's leading supplier of network-based distributed computing systems, including technical workstations, servers and UNIX operating system and productivity software. Xerox is an office equipment and financial services firm offering, among other things, workstations, networks, electronic printers, scanners and related software. Press contacts: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Greg Xenakis (415) 691-6543 Xerox Contact Terry Dillman (213) 333-3487