Longtime rivals and occasional collaborators Sun Microsystems and Microsoft announced on Wednesday that Sun will ship 64-bit servers with Microsoft"s Windows Server 2003 operating system. Within 90 days, Sun will offer Windows Server 2003 on its entire line of Sun x64 systems. Sun already certifies that Windows Servers will run on its hardware, but this agreement will allow Sun to preinstall the software and offer support to customers.
The two companies also committed to expanding their technical collaboration -- first announced in 2004 but one which had not lived up to the initial hoopla -- into virtualisation. In particular, the two companies said they will ensure that Solaris will work well as a "guest" with Microsoft"s virtualisation technology and Windows will work well in a virtualised Solaris environment.