According to Friday's press release:

The measures result from the broa 10-year technical collaboration agreement, announced in April 2004, that 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(TM)-based Operating System, Sun Java(TM) Enterprise System and Microsoft(R) Windows Server(TM) 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.