About Sun
FIRST, LAST, AND ALWAYS

By Scott McNealy

"Network computing is the heart and soul of this company. Always has been; always will be. I've been saying it for years, but I'll say it again: Our aim is to connect anyone, anywhere, anytime -- using virtually anything -- to the resources they need.

The basic assumption behind all of our products and services is this: Every man, woman, and child will be connected to a high-speed network at all times, no matter where they are. Now that's a pretty big assumption when you think that half the people on the planet live their lives without ever making a phone call. All the same, I wouldn't bet against it.

About 18 years ago, when Sun was founded, we made that assumption. We bet on the proliferation of networking, and it's happening -- big time. The globe is being wrapped in fiber-optic cable, dotted with relay antennas, circled by satellites. Bandwidth is increasing at a faster rate than processor speed. And our Net-based products and technologies have been catching on in a big way.

We bet on bandwidth, and we bet on open systems. Sun solutions have always been based on open interfaces and industry standards -- an approach that promotes competition, innovation, and customer choice. We believe that proprietary lock-ins (still being touted by some of our competitors) have no place in the network age.

What we're seeing instead is that the Web is taking charge. Its core technologies -- TCP/IP, NFS, HTML, HTTP, Java, Jini, XML -- are what power the new ".com" economy. They have become the international language of business, and we believe everyone should have access to the grammar, syntax, and alphabet of that language.

We're also seeing voice, video, and data converge on a single network based on Internet protocols. As that happens, our aim is to provide what we call Webtone -- like the dependable dialtone of your telephone, but with multimedia capabilities. Everything from e-mail to ERP to e-commerce will depend on Webtone, and you can bet that Sun, with a proven ability to build reliable, scalable solutions, will play a big part in delivering the goods.

First, last, and always, network computing is what we do."


www.sun.com