Sun Microsystems is acquiring German software developer Innotek and its Virtualbox technology. With more than four million downloads, Virtualbox is already enabling enterprises around the world to switch between multiple operating systems at the click of a mouse button.
With Virtualbox, applications that otherwise would be unavailable to PC users will run on laptops and desktops regardless of the base operating system  . The free software, which takes up about 25MB of disk space, can be quickly installed on any x86-architecture laptop or desktop running the Windows , Linux , Mac or Solaris operating systems, said Tim Marsland, chief technology officer at Sun's operating-platforms organization.
"You can run most any other popular operating system on the same machine, or several at the same time, depending on what hardware resources are available," Marsland noted in a blog.
Targeting Software Developers
Sun Executive Vice President Rich Green thinks Virtualbox is the perfect complement to the company's new virtualization engine for data centers. "Whereas Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the data center, Virtualbox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment," Green said.
In particular, Sun likes Virtualbox because it will enable software developers to build multi-tier or cross-platform applications.
"The grand plan, inclusive of Innotek, and like most everything we do in software at Sun, has a focus on developers," Green wrote in a recent blog. Virtualbox is free "for developers to learn, understand, enhance and contribute to the ever-growing community around the technology."
A Server Image in Miniature
Marsland sees desktop virtualization as "the key to creating a working implementation, on a developer's laptop, that can include much or all of the machinery that resides in the server farm, or the deployment environment." It will allow developers to construct "an image in miniature of the server environment -- physical or virtual -- where all of this machinery will ultimately run," he wrote.
Most developers would prefer to target multiple operating systems to maximize their audience and return on the time they've invested in their applications, Marsland wrote. "Tools like Virtualbox let them do that by running everything -- test environments, debug environments, etc. -- on a single laptop," he noted.
Moving forward, Virtualbox will have the support of Sun's global development community, field resources and partners. This should make Virtualbox even more compelling to open-source software developers and end users alike, driving greater adoption across a broad set of communities, Sun executives said.
Based in Stuttgart, Innotek is an internally funded software company with offices in Dresden, Berlin and the Russian Federation. Sun's acquisition of Innotek is expected to close by the end of next month. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed because the transaction is not expected to have a material impact on Sun's earnings, the company said.
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