Sun Microsystems (Quote, Company Info) Wednesday detailed more of its new "software-train", which it says will beat Microsoft (Quote, Company Info) at its own game.

Dubbed "Project Orion," the Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm said it will base all of its software on its Solaris, Solaris for x86 and Linux platforms and offer a single distribution venue with three licensing models. The first wave of the project is expected to start this June.

The spectrum of software included in Project Orion will span Solaris and Linux at the core with a common Java runtime environment and combine Web services infrastructure technologies, such as application servers and portals; Microsoft-interoperable e-mail and communications; Liberty-enabled directory and identity; Grid engine, streaming media, storage management, availability monitoring technologies, and clustering.

Customers will initially be offered Sun ONE (Open Network Environment) products. The company Tuesday said its other platforms would be included at a later date.

"We've heard consistently that CIOs are tired of handling the integration role for the operating environment. They want us to engineer the complexity out, drive standards and interoperability, and get the costs down," said Sun executive vice president of Software Jonathan Schwartz.

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