Sun Touts Internet E-Mail

Acquires line of fault-tolerant telecom servers

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By Clinton Wilder
Issue date: March 25, 1996

Sun Microsystems is not about to give up its position as one of the Internet's technology leaders. Just two weeks after Microsoft announced its latest strategy for the growing Internet market, Sun plans to roll out a wide range of Net-related products, such as 64-bit hardware for enterprise Web servers, an Internet mail system called Solstice Internet Mail, and enhancements to its SunScreen s ecurity products.

At the top of the list are additions to Sun's industry-leading line of Netra Internet servers that will use the 64-bit UltraSparc chip. Netra is the market share leader among Unix-based Internet servers, but Silicon Graphics recently eclipsed Sun as the first to market with 64-bit servers with its Challenge 10000 line unveiled in January.

Sun also moved to shore up its server technology last week when it offered $96.1 million to acquire U.K.-based Integrated Micro Products, which makes the ft-Sparc line of fault-tolerant servers for the telecom industry.

This week, Sun will become the first major vendor to offer an Internet E-Mail package that integrates IMAP4 (Internet Messaging Access Protocol), a new standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force that includes much better support for remote mail users.

Sun, in Mountain View, Calif., touts Solstice Internet Mail as interoperable across all server platforms and across all client mail applications tha t run on Solaris, Windows 95, Windows 3.x and Windows NT operating systems.

Solstice Internet Mail Server will be available in June for $995. But the client implementation, as well as a beta version of the server software, can be downloaded for free starting March 26 from Sun's Web site .

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