Acquisition: Sun Acquires i-Planet, Privately-held Developer of Award-winning Secure Remote Access Software - Company Business and Marketing

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Oct 12, 1998

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced Monday (Oct. 5) it has acquired i-Planet Inc., a privately-held company specializing in secure Internet communications solutions. With the acquisition, i-Planet becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun. Sun also announced that i-Planet's RemotePassage software will become a core element of Sun's new technology code-named the Sun.Net Strategy.

"Sun's vision of anyone, anytime, anywhere computing is coming together in a viable end-to-end software architecture," said Ed Zander, chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems, Inc. "i-Planet puts another unique software technology in the Sun arsenal that provides remote access to the corporate intranet from any available computer."

The Sun.Net Strategy will allow Information Technology (IT) managers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to cost effectively provide end users with fast, secure access to personal email, data, applications, internal Web sites and network services from any Internet-connected device, without the cost and complexity of building a virtual private network (VPN).

"Sun's leadership in the service provider industry positions it to be able to quickly build market share for i-Planet technologies as a natural extension of its industrial-strength Solaris operating environment and award-winning Sun Internet Mail Server," said David Vereeke, cofounder and president at i-Planet. "Further, the power of our combined companies and technologies gives us some exciting opportunities to play a critical role in accelerating the growth of the global Internet market."

Founded in 1996, i-Planet is a leading-edge software developer of Java technology-based, enterprise networking solutions for remote access. i-Planet's products include:

o RemotePassage, a unique remote access software solution for leveraging the Internet without compromising the security of the corporate Intranet.

o PonyEspresso, one of the industry's first Internet email client based on Java technology that also enables secure access to corporate email through a Web address from any browser. It is also one of the first to support the industry standards for disconnected use.

o i-Planet Solution (IPS) product family a suite of Internet connectivity solutions that provide businesses of any size with full-featured Internet access.

FMI: http://www.i-planet.com, FMI: http://www.sun.com.