ISO's U.S. Body Votes on Sun's Application to become International Standard Submitter

Cupertino, CA, Oct. 28 -- Representatives of ISO's U.S. Technical Advisory Group (U.S. TAG) voted today against Sun Microsystems' Inc.'s application to become a "Publicly Available Specification Submitter"to submit Java ™ platform technologies to become international standards.

To date, Australia, Denmark, France, Hungary, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have approved Sun's application under rules established by the International Organization for Standards (ISO).

The deadline for all 27 national regulatory bodies voting in the ISO process is November 14. According to ISO, if a consensus of the organizations approves Sun's application, Sun will become a Submitter of Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) and could submit Java platform specifications for review as an international standard.

Other countries which will vote on Sun's application in the next two weeks are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, and Switzerland.

Last spring, in a preliminary evaluation of Sun's application, the U.S. TAG cast a vote of "no, with comments," to request further information from Sun.

At ISO's invitation, Sun filed its request to be a PAS Submitter in March. ISO national member bodies had until July 15 to evaluate Sun's application and register initial comments.

Sun answered those comments in writing by a Sept. 24 deadline set by ISO. National member bodies now must cast their final ballots on Sun's application by Nov. 14.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The Network Is The Computer™" has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ "SUNW") to its position as a leading provider of hardware, software and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet. With more than $8.5 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 150 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.

Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, JavaSoft, and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

The International Internet Associate Symposium '97 will take place November 5-7, 1997 in Berlin. Learn about the latest Java Computing solutions, services and support that are enabling companies on The Road to Java ™ -- from evaluation to pilot programs to enterprise-wide implementation. For more information about the IIAS 97, or to register, visit us on the web at www.sun.de/IIAS97.