Sun ships Solaris 8 beta software to key customers and ISVs

Sun Microsystems today announced it is

shipping the first beta version of the Solaris 8 operating environment to

approximately 300 key customers and independent software vendors (ISVs).

The beta release, available simultaneously for both SPARC and Intel

platforms, has many new feature enhancements including an improved,

easy-to-use AppCert testing tool that verifies existing Solaris

applications will run unmodified on the Solaris 8 operating environment.

Solaris 8 software extends Sun’s lead in the Unix® platform market and

delivers on its previously announced Solaris operating environment road

map.

Solaris software is the de-facto Dot.Com OS providing enterprises and

service providers with an available, scalable, trustworthy and universal

platform. The first beta release of Solaris 8 software includes new

enterprise-class manageability, networking and Javaâ„¢ technology

enhancements.

Existing Solaris applications written to adhere to the Solaris

application binary interface (ABI) are compatible with new versions of the

operating environment, including Solaris 8 software. Developers can verify

whether their applications are compatible with the Solaris ABI by running

Sun’s AppCert tool to analyze application binaries and report on any

potential incompatibilities. AppCert and other Solaris binary

compatibility tools and information for both the SPARC and Intel platforms

are available for free download from http://www.sun.com/developers/tools/abi/.