November 29, 2004 8:51 AM PST

Sun, Microsoft to flesh out pact

By Martin LaMonica
Staff Writer, CNET News

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Microsoft and Sun Microsystems on Wednesday plan to provide details about their six-month-old alliance for the first time.

The two companies have scheduled a teleconference to give a "progress report" on their landmark pact and define some of the parameters of the collaborative work, according to a Microsoft representative. Sun Chief Technology Officer Greg Papadopoulos and a Microsoft vice president plan to host the teleconference.

Announced in April, the wide-reaching deal called for the two long-time adversaries to settle their ongoing legal disputes and share technology in order to improve interoperability between their respective products. The deal involved payments of up to $1.95 billion to Sun.

As part of the deal, Sun withdrew from antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft. The two companies also created a patent-sharing arrangement, under which Sun and Microsoft pledged not to sue each other over patents. Despite the partnership, Sun and Microsoft executives vowed to continue competing aggressively.

When the deal was first announced, the companies provided few details on the nature of their technical collaboration, singling out network sign-on capabilities and Web services as two areas of potential work.

Since the deal's signing, the bulk of the collaboration has been on interoperability between Sun's Solaris operating system and Microsoft's Windows OS and on interoperability of Web services, said one Sun executive.

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