Sun And Apple Announce Alliance

Today Apple and Sun will join together at the InterOp show in Atlanta to
announce a far-reaching strategic alliance. It is our common goal to
provide powerful, flexible and media-rich Internet solutions that combine
Sun’s expertise in high-performance networking and Apple’s desktop ease of
use and multimedia leadership.

As part of this alliance, we will work together with Sun to leverage the
traditional strengths of our respective companies — Sun’s leadership
position in the enterprise Internet/intranet server area and their
industry-leading Java technologies, and Apple’s legacy in ease of use and
multimedia technologies, with QuickTime, the OpenDoc developer framework
and Open Transport networking technology.

Today’s announcement focuses on several major areas where we will work
together to provide users the industry’s best combination of
Internet/intranet server and client offerings . More detail is provided in
the press release
(http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1996/q4/960918.pr.rel.sun.
html) and Q & A
(http://web.apple.com/Areas/NewsArchive/199609/applesunqa). The highlights
are as follows:

Sun and Apple will enhance their operating environments to provide a
seamless bridge between Sun Solaris servers and Mac OS clients. This means
our customers will be able to tap into powerful Solaris-based environments
from Macintosh clients, realizing the benefits of robust, high-performance
networking with full connectivity, advanced network management and
complete network security.

We will work together with Sun to develop cost-effective, cross-platform
and customizable application solutions by enhancing the integration of
OpenDoc and Java Beans, making compound document development easier.

Sun will enhance JavaMedia to fully support QuickTime. This combination of
the industry’s leading multimedia technology with the top Internet
development environment will provide customers and developers with the
richest multimedia content, capabilites and on the Internet/intranet.

While there’s a considerable amount of more detail that our alliance with
Sun entails, I want you to keep in mind a few things that this annoucement
signifies. We are the undisputed leader when it comes to multimedia
technologies. We believe the extremely complimentary blend of Apple and
Sun client-server products and technologies, combined with full system
interoperability, will significantly enhance Apple’s position as a strong
client-side solution in the enterprise. Our commitment to the enterprise
is unwavering, and today’s announcement underscores this commitment. Also,
this joint effort directly supports our corporate strategy to align and
quickly move forward to capitalize on the Internet/intranet and multimedia
industry megatrends.

While we are still putting together some of the underpinnings of our
technology alliance with Sun, I can’t address all the questions I know you
must have, but I hope you’ll share with me in the excitment and promise
that today’s announcment holds. I look forward to sharing more information
with you in the future as we make progress on our work with Sun.

Regards,

George Scalise
Chief Administrative Officer

For Additional Information:

Sun And Apple Announce Alliance Press Release
http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1996/q4/960918.pr.rel.sun.h
tml

Sun And Apple Announce Alliance Q & A
(http://web.apple.com/Areas/NewsArchive/199609/applesunqa)