The abbreviation SUNW stands for "Stanford University Network Workstation" and has been the stock exchange symbol for the company's shares since it went public in 1986. Two of the three founders, Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla, were students at Stanford University. In the meantime, many of Sun's products and projects revolve around the object-oriented Java programming language. Java has been a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems since 1995. "But SUNW represents the past, and it's not without a nostalgic nod that we've decided to look ahead." says Sun's CEO and President Jonathan Schwarz talking about the decision in his Blog. Thanks to the Internet, Java is now better known than the company name, Sun Microsystems, he says.

Schwartz thus views this as critical to the company's marketing strategy. In his opinion, the popularity of the business today is mainly due to its brands StarOffice, the Open Source variant OpenOffice, and the Java Internet technology. "This isn't about changing the company name" he makes clear, going on to add that "we are no longer simply a workstation company, nor a company whose products can be limited by one category - and Java does a better job of capturing exactly that sentiment than any other four letter symbol."

In the same context, Schwartz referred to cooperation with Google, which was announced just a few days ago.