(RTTNews) - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (JAVA: News ) Thursday said its stockholders have approved the merger agreement with Oracle Corp. (ORCL: News ) at a special meeting of stockholders held on July 16, 2009, paving way for the merger of two tech giants. Under the merger agreement announced on April 20, 2009, the database software maker will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash.

Santa Clara, California-based Sun, known for its UltraSPARC processor-based servers, Solaris operating system and and Java technology, was founded in 1982 by Stanford University graduate students Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim and Scott McNealy. The name Sun was derived from the initials of Stanford University Network.

Sun's first products were workstations for businesses, based on the then popular UNIX operating system. Sun was a major beneficiary of the dot-com boom that happened in the 90's and it witnessed a dramatic rise in revenues during the period. But with the bubble-burst, Sun was severely affected, which was reflected in sagging revenues and margins from 2001. After 2001, Sun reported losses for many straight quarters and its much hyped vision - Network is the Computer- also failed to takeoff as expected.

In 2006, Sun's long-time chief executive officer Scott McNealy stepped down from the post and appointed Jonathan Schwartz as new CEO. This too did not solve Sun's problems and in early 2009, was reported to have had talks with IBM for a possible acquisition. The unconfirmed talks with the Big Blue, however, fell apart. Subsequently in April, Oracle agreed to acquire Sun for $9.50 per share in cash deal aggregating about $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion, net of Sun's cash and debt.

The Redwood City, California-based Oracle is said to have been lured by the substantial long-term strategic customer advantages owning two key Sun software assets: Java and Solaris.
On Monday this week, Oracle said it expects the acquisition of Sun to add to its earnings by at least $0.15 a share on an adjusted basis in the first full year after closing. After reviewing Sun's fourth quarter preliminary results, Oracle also said it anticipates the deal to contribute over $1.5 billion to its adjusted operating profit in the first year and increase to over $2 billion in the second year.

According to Sun, shareholders who own about 62% of the shares of its common stock outstanding as of the record date for the meeting voted to adopt the agreement. The company also said that the transaction still remains subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.

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