PC Expo: Sun buys object developer Lighthouse Design noted for its OpenStep tools By Sari Kalin, IDG News Service

June  1996

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New York -- Sun Microsystems plans to buy Lighthouse Design Ltd., a vendor of object-oriented development and productivity tools, said Chairman Scott McNealy during his keynote presentation at PC Expo here June 18.

"We think objects are here for sure now," said McNealy, who is also president and CEO of Sun. "We have acquired a very excellent design team."

McNealy did not disclose the amount of the transaction.

Sun sees Lighthouse's offerings as enhancing and extending Sun's object technologies, said McNealy, who pointed out that Lighthouse's products are already OpenStep-compliant. OpenStep is NeXT Software Inc.'s object-oriented development environment that the company has promised will run on multiple operating systems including Windows 95 and Windows NT; Sun is porting OpenStep to its Solaris operating system.

Lighthouse Design, which is based in San Mateo, CA, will be an independent business unit and will report to Chief Technology Officer Eric Schmidt. Lighthouse Design's CEO Jonathan Schwartz will become general manager of that business unit.

The deal requires the approval of Lighthouse Design shareholders and Sun expects it to close by June 30.

Sun will incur a one-time charge for purchased R&D in the fourth quarter that is not expected to exceed US$.10 per share as a result of this transaction, according to a company statement.

Resources

• Sun Microsystems home page
  http://www.sun.com/
• SunSoft NEO Product Family
  http://www.sun.com/sunsoft/neo/index.html
• Lighthouse Design, Ltd
  http://www.lighthouse.com/

If you have technical problems with this magazine, contact webmaster@sunworld.com

URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-06-1996/swol-06-lighthouse.html
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