Sun Microsystems Inc’s annual 10-K filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission on Friday revealed that it has acquired i- Planet Inc, the Sunnyvale, California-based remote access product and Java software company. The two companies have been close for some time, with Sun licensing i-Planet’s PonyEspresso Java email client for its own internal use exactly a year ago (09/24/97). In the agreement signed on September 2, but hitherto unannounced, Sun has acquired all the i-Planet stock for an undisclosed amount of cash. Sun is expected to announce the acquisition at Fall Internet World in New York next week. It is not exactly clear what Sun intends to do with the technology, but reports suggest some sort of web- based product using i-Planet’s secure remote access capabilities. i-Planet has two other product lines, which are RemotePassage, a way of accessing IT resources from a Java-enabled browser and IPS, a turnkey hardware and software bundle for internet access. There are other links between the two companies. David Vereeke, I-Planet’s co-founder and president was once director of engineering at Sun, leading the development of its networking products and Kevin Kalajan, the company’s CTO, was involved in the marketing of networking products at Sun.
