And so it went. The U.S. became sort-of friends with Russia, India and Pakistan started talking, and many dogs and cats were seen living together in harmony. But the Sun/Microsoft debate raged in.

Things seemed to shift dramatically a year ago when McNealy, still Sun's CEO, and Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's CEO, got together and found some points of agreement. Then a Java settlement was reached, enriching Sun to some degree and relieving roadblocks to reunifying the Java platform.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the initial agreement, and the companies have made a major joint announcement outlning several areas of progress.

The announcement encompasses aspects of the broad 10-year technical collaboration agreement, announced last year, which set the framework for increased cooperation between the companies to enable their products to work better together. The chief executive officers noted that over the past year the companies have made considerable progress building a productive work relationship at various levels and setting the foundation for a number of initiatives to address customer interoperability needs.

"Over the past year we have worked to establish great communication at all levels between our companies, from regular executive meetings to in-depth working sessions with our engineers," said Ballmer. "In the first year, we've moved from the courtroom to the computer lab. Now we're moving from the lab to the market."

"Sun and Microsoft are working together ... and quite well at that," said McNealy. "A year ago, the skeptics doubted that we could agree on the shape of the table, much less collaborate on solving some of the industry's toughest problems. Surprise - we did just that and today we've taken a huge step forward. Single sign-on experience between the Solaris-based Operating System, Sun Java Enterprise System and Microsoft Windows Server has been customers' top request. This is just the beginning of a long list of projects we're working on."

The companies noted their strong outreach to customers in developing the relationship as well as identifying key areas and projects. Over the past year, top executives from both companies have spoken regularly to customers to get a better understanding of priorities and concerns. A key area for customers was product interoperability; in addition to the Web specifications, the companies also announced licensing agreements and product cooperation that address customer interoperability needs.

Web Single Sign-On (SSO)

The companies have jointly developed and published two draft specifications: Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange (Web SSO MEX) Protocol and Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile (Web SSO Interop Profile). These new specifications enable browser-based Web SSO between security domains that use Liberty ID-FF and WS-Federation. Products that support the Web SSO MEX Protocol and the Web SSO Interop Profile will enable companies to provide users with an improved Web SSO experience from their Web browsers.

As part of the companies' ongoing commitment to improving interoperability across their respective product lines, Microsoft and Sun also announced plans to support the new specifications within their product portfolios, including Microsoft Windows Server and Sun Java Enterprise System.

Microsoft and Sun welcome participation in the further development of these draft specifications through the Web services protocol workshop process, and ultimately will submit them to a standards organization for finalization and ratification as industry standards. Drafts of the new specifications are available on Microsoft's Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/understanding/specs/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/wssecurspecindex.asp and Sun's Web site at http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/identity/interop/index.html for anyone to review and comment on.

"The integration of the products of these two companies is critical to General Motors," said Fred Killeen, director of Systems Development and chief technology officer for General Motors Information Systems & Services. "The reduction in integration cost and operational complexity will be a key enabler in implementing identity management initiatives for GM and for the industry as a whole."

"Finding ways to improve interoperability and reduce overlap between the Liberty Alliance specifications and the WS-* Web services architecture is a primary goal of the Liberty Alliance," said Michael Barrett, vice president, Security Strategy for American Express Co., and president of the Liberty Alliance from 2002 to 2004. "The Microsoft and Sun agreement showed a great deal of promise as a practical way to achieve that interoperability, and today's announcements go a long way toward enabling the interoperability that enterprises and vendors both need."

WS-Management Specification

Microsoft and Sun are collaborating on systems management to enable deep interoperability between their operating systems and management products. As part of this effort, the companies are collaborating on the development of the WS-Management a Web services specification, co-authored by Microsoft, Intel, Sun and other vendors, that defines a single protocol to meet management requirements spanning hardware devices, operating systems and applications. Sun will implement WS-Management in the Solaris 10 Operating System, management service processors in its x64-based Sun Fire servers and the Sun N1 management software tools, to provide full systems management interoperability across Solaris and Windows environments. In addition, Sun has created an implementation of WS-Management in Java programming language that it plans to release to the open source community at http://www.java.net. WS-Management also is a key component of the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative and will ship as a standard part of Windows Server 2003 starting with R2.

Windows on Sun

Microsoft and Sun are committed to addressing customer needs in the field of 64-bit computing. The Sun Fire x64 server for x64 systems and Sun Java Workstation product lines carry the Designed for Windows logo, have passed Microsoft's stringent compatibility testing suite and are listed in the Windows Catalogs. Sun and Microsoft also have signed an agreement providing Sun back-line support for Windows on Sun systems.

Systems Integrators

Leading system integration companies including Accenture, EDS and NEC Corp. also support the Sun and Microsoft relationship and are providing interoperability between Sun and Microsoft products for their customers.

"Accenture is deploying for clients numerous solutions that combine the Sun and Microsoft environments, which require that the J2EE and Microsoft .NET platforms interoperate," said Don Rippert, chief technology officer at Accenture. "Microsoft and Sun are building easy interoperation into their product sets. This allows the Windows platform and the Java Enterprise System to communicate to ensure heterogeneous management, transaction integration and common authentication. Sun and Microsoft are providing what our clients are increasingly demanding: best-of-breed options based on proven interoperability from their technology providers."

"EDS is excited to enhance its relationship with both Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, which is already strong under the EDS Agility Alliance," said Charlie Feld, executive vice president, Portfolio Management, EDS. "EDS brings considerable expertise in delivering solutions combining Sun and Microsoft products and is a key partner in qualifying, delivering and supporting Solaris 10 on SPARC and AMD Opteron platforms from Sun. EDS also delivers Windows-based solutions on the AMD Opteron-based Sun Fire hardware platform"

"NEC is a strong partner to both Sun and Microsoft, and has considerable expertise delivering best-of-breed middleware solutions and services that help customers deploy and manage Sun and Microsoft technologies and products in their heterogeneous environments," said Toshiro Kawamura, senior executive vice president and member of the board at NEC. "NEC strongly supports interoperability between Solaris/Java Enterprise System and Windows/.NET and is committed to expand our expertise to assist customers deploying advanced identity solutions."

Protocol License for Sun Ray Thin Client Solutions

The companies announced that Sun has licensed Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol and will implement it in its Sun Ray ultra-thin client product line in the near future. This means that users of Sun Ray thin clients now can access Windows Terminal Services running on Windows Server 2003.

Windows Terminal Services enables users to remotely access and display Microsoft Windows running on Windows Server 2003 from a wide range of client devices, including those that do not run on Windows.