Declaration of Brian Croll.
Re: Bristol Technology v. Microsoft.
Date: September 24, 1998.
Source: Bristol Technology, Inc.

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September 24, 1998

DECLARATION OF BRIAN CROLL

I, Brian Croll, declare under penalty of perjury as follows:

1. I am Brian Croll. Director of Solaris Product Marketing at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

2.  Sun Microsystems is a provider of hardware, software, and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet.

Sun built its business around open standards. That same strategy applies to its approach to software development, in particular with the development of the Solaris Product Line. Solaris is built to operate in heterogeneous environments. Since it conforms to many industry standards, Solaris can interoperate with any system also built around these standards. Solaris protocols are open which allows free competition among vendors of network systems, and provides customers a choice of vendors.

3.  I am responsible for the Solaris product line strategy and definition, as well as communication to customers of the products’ features and benefits.

4.  Sun’s Solaris product is the operating environment product line used by customers in the markets for power desktops, servers, and embedded applications. Solaris competes with Microsoft’s Windows NT and SCO’s UnixWare as well as with IBM’s AIX (and to a small degree, MVS), HP’s HP-UX, Compaq/ Digital’s UNIX and SGI’s IRIX.

5.  As the Director of Solaris Product Marketing, I am familiar with the competition between Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and UNIX operating systems in the server and advanced Workstation markets.

6.  Windows NT is a relative latecomer to these markets. Microsoft’s share of new shipments in both markets is growing very rapidly, however. According to Dataquest, the unit share of new shipments of NT in the server market rose from seven-tenths of one percent in 1993 to an estimated 49 percent this year; and in workstations, the unit share of new shipments of Windows NT grew from less than a tenth of one percent in 1993 to an estimated 43 percent this year. This growth has occurred despite the fact that Windows NT has particular weaknesses as a server and/or workstation. These include poor scalability (i.e., a severe limitation on the number of clients that can be supported) and a lack of robustness (i.e., a tendency not to work reliably under a board range of circumstances).

7.  Microsoft’s rapid growth as a supplier of operating systems for servers and advanced workstations is based largely on the enormous number and variety of applications written to run on the Windows application programming interface ("API"). Customers are attracted to Windows because of the availability of low-cost "productivity applications" such as spreadsheets and word processors on the Windows platform. The cost of those applications is a direct result of Microsoft’s overwhelming position in the market for desktop PC operating systems, which provides a huge customer base over which software developers can spread the fixed cost of development, and the size of the customer base attracts additional developers, who become locked in to the Windows API. Because Microsoft keeps their implementation secret, only Microsoft applications can take advantage of the capabilities that make applications more useful or faster-running.

8.  I am familiar with the availability of Bristol Technology’s Wind/U product. From Sun’s point of view, Wind /U competes with Windows by allowing Solaris to run applications written for the Windows API. Wind/U enables a higher degree of competition between Solaris and NT by expanding the Solaris application base to include Windows applications, thereby reducing the principal advantage that NT has to offer in relation to Solaris.

Executed at Menlo Park, California this 24th day of September 1998.

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Brian Croll