Oracle is the company that acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010, gaining control of Java and the Solaris operating system.
Oracle completed the acquisition of Sun Microsystems in January 2010 for approximately $7.4 billion. Sun had developed important technologies including the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, the SPARC processor architecture, and the MySQL database.
The deal strengthened Oracle’s strategy of selling integrated hardware and software systems to business customers. Oracle later discontinued some Sun hardware lines while continuing to support and develop Java, Solaris, and other technologies that had become important to enterprise computing.
Sun is sometimes remembered mainly as a hardware company, but its software legacy was equally significant. Java had become widely used for enterprise applications, web services, and Android development, while MySQL remained a prominent open-source relational database. Oracle’s purchase therefore affected both infrastructure and software markets.