Sun Microsystems Inc’s revelation of a new multimedia business unit to be formed within the next three months to serve the telephone, cable and interactive markets was announced to the conference by Ed Callahan, vice-president and general manager of Sun’s global telecommunications and cable division (CI No 2,447): the new unit will focus on producing interactive network product and will develop a media server, based on standard Sun products, that will first ship by the latter half of calendar year 1995; the objective is to bring together the components from Sun businesses that are focused on the information superhighway; it will be known as Sun Interactive, and will work together with partners in the telephone and cable industries; he said that Sun’s current operations in these areas contributed about $650m in revenues during fiscal 1994, which ended yesterday, or 14% of Sun’s total revenues for the year ending June 30; the unit will focus on making connections between Sun’s server products, Asynchronous Transfer Mode Networks and the television set-top devices that are to be used in the interactive networks of the future; other products from the unit would include devices to lower the cost of making connections to advanced digital networks.
