Sun and IBM have extended their Java technology agreement to 2016, under which IBM will continue to license and use Java technologies from Sun, including Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) and Java Card throughout its software products, including its middleware and web services portfolios.

Steve Mills' video message to JavaOne attendees, during Jonathan Schwartz's opening keynote. (Photo copyright SYS-CON Media)

Sun and IBM will continue to advance and enhance the development of Java technology through the collaborative Java Community Process (JCP) . In addition, IBM will also expand its role to become a channel partner in delivering Java compatible products for the embedded market to Sun's Java technology licensees.

"The next wave of economic and social progress will spring from ever-growing communities participating on the web. Open technologies like Java and Solaris lower barriers to network participation and, together, form the world's most advanced platform for Internet service development and deployment," said Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Today's agreement with IBM to extend their commitment to Java technology and to port IBM middleware to Solaris 10 for x86 is a major step forward. Now customers can deploy the applications they want on Solaris 10 and share in this vast opportunity."

"This agreement helps assure that IBM customers can continue to benefit from Java," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group. "In addition, for more than 10 years IBM has set the industry standard with a practice of porting our software to various platforms based on customer demand. We have been supporting Solaris as an operating system for many years. Recently, we have seen an increase in customer interest in running Solaris on Intel/AMD platforms. Based on that interest, we have decided to port our key middleware products to Solaris 10 on Intel/AMD systems."

Additionally, in what the companies say is a response to customer demand, IBM will broaden support of its DB2, Rational, Tivoli and WebSphere software to include the Solaris 10 OS on x64 AMD Opteron -based platforms. The companies each plan to make dedicated investments in engineering and testing focused on product interoperability, performance optimization and timely delivery. As a result, customers will be able to take advantage of key features of Solaris 10, including Dynamic Tracing, Solaris Containers and Predictive Self Healing on any architecture, while protecting their investment in IBM software.

"Today's news also demonstrates IBM and Sun's ongoing commitment to help customers gain control of data center complexity to improve utilization and help ensure availability of business-critical data, while leveraging the compelling benefits of the Solaris 10 OS on SPARC, x86 and x64 platforms," the companies said.