Sun Microsystems indeed collaborating with Intel

Sun Microsystems Inc. and Intel Corp. have together formed a new alliance which would battle for the lucrative market for corporate servers and software.

Sun added in a statement that they would soon begin building and shipping later this year servers and workstations that run on Intel processors.

Intel is now going to officially endorse Sun’s Solaris operating system in return. The company has been facing massive competition in the server market from smaller rival AMD.

Market analysts believe that this support from Intel would help Sun gain a stronghold in the server software market with their Solaris operating system product.

Larry Cao, a semiconductor equity analyst with Morningstar added: “We see ‘07 as the year of Intel — everything is working in their favor now. They’re back on top, their product line is strong, and they’re gaining customers. This is one example — they finally penetrated this one account that was purely AMD. That’s a major score for them.”

Intel CEO Paul Otellini added: “This is not just a commercial endeavor. This is a deep, cooperative effort. If you look at both companies, they both have a strong legacy of technology innovation. We’re now able to do that in a collaborative fashion.”