The company said that enable developers to more efficiently build, test and run applications on multiple platforms, VirtualBox would extend Sun’s own xVM platform.
Sun did not say how much the stock purchase agreement is worth.
Innotek's open source VirtualBox has had more than four million downloads since January 2007. The product lets desktop or laptop PCs running the Windows, Linux, Mac or Solaris operating systems to run multiple, different operating systems side-by-side, switching between them with a click of the mouse.
This means software developers can more easily build multi-tier or cross-platform applications, or power-users to take advantage of applications that may not be available for their base operating system of choice.
“VirtualBox provides Sun with the perfect complement to our recently announced Sun xVM Server product,” Sun Software executive vice-president Rich Green said.
“Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the datacentre, VirtualBox is ideal for a laptop or desktop environment.”
The agreement to acquire innotek follows Sun's announcement on January 16 of a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL, the popular open source database.
Sun said the acquisitions reaffirm the company’s status as the largest commercial open source contributor.
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