Sun Solaris is a UNIX-based operating system. It is the most used version of the UNIX operating system. It is especially prevalent in higher education, government, finance, large businesses, and as the operating system for large-scale web presence. The Solaris operating system excels at file sharing, web serving, large database serving, and the implementation of Java programs. (Java was originally developed by Sun.) Solaris will run on the same kinds of computers that run Windows 2000 Server (Intel Pentium-based computer) as well as on computers based on the SPARC cpu. Like Novel, Solaris adheres to all modern networking and Internet standards and protocols making it easy to set up clients from any computer platform (UNIX, Linux, Windows, or MacOS). (Neither Microsoft's not Apple's networking products adhere to the standards as completely.) Solaris is also stronger with security than either Microsoft's or Apple's network operating systems.
If you were to look at a list of software available for the Solaris operating system, you would find few programs that are commonly found on other platforms. Programs for Solaris tend to be geared toward larger academic, financial, government, business, and web-based organizations.