20 May 2002 Systems vendor Sun Microsystems will officially launch its Solaris 9 Unix operating system on Wednesday, 22 May.

Solaris 9 will be one of the major building blocks in Sun’s web services platform. The new operating system will boast improved systems utilities, new management tools and considerably tightened security. It will also include some basic ‘utility computing’ features, such as enabling systems administrators to allocate microprocessor power to groups of users.

But most notable of all is the inclusion of the Sun Open Network Environment (Sun ONE) Directory Server and iPlanet Application Server (iAS) software. This is intended to bolster the market for iAS in particular, sales of which have been disappointing, while giving users a better opportunity to build web services around Sun’s technology, rather than that of rivals such as Microsoft or IBM.