One year ago Microsoft and Sun struck a peace accord that has been described as a watershed event for the technology industry and a potential boon for users. Although the deal ended the antagonism between the companies, users still may have to wait well into the 10-year alliance to see major results.

“There is no real visibility of the benefits of the deal yet,” said Dave Shearer, spokesman for the U.K. Sun user group. “I had no real expectations timescalewise. These things always seem to take a long time to work.”

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, agreed. “I think the expectations were not particularly high. Nobody expected Java and .Net to merge or suddenly coexist. Nobody expected Sun to start selling Windows. It basically was an expensive settlement to a legal battle.”

On April 2, 2004, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Sun CEO Scott McNealy exchanged Detroit Red Wings hockey jerseys in a San Francisco hotel room and said changes were coming for their customers. McNealy promised progress reports as part of Sun’s quarterly product announcements.

As part of the deal, Microsoft paid Sun $1.95 billion. That settled all outstanding litigation between the companies and started a dialogue and technology exchange as part of a 10-year collaboration agreement.

Since then Microsoft and Sun have been coy about their collaboration. The companies have started work on four proposed Web services standards, and certain Sun hardware products have been certified to support Windows Server software.

Microsoft Spokesman Jim Desler said the companies have made “small but incremental progress” during the past year. “I think we have been realistic from the outset that this was not really going to be judged by days or weeks or one year, but really where the companies are going in the next five to 10 years,” he said.

In a December conference call Hank Vigil, Microsoft vice president of partnerships, said, “Not only are we crawling well, but we’re learning how to walk, and some day we expect to run together.”

The accord between Microsoft and Sun did change the dynamics between the companies. Engineers of both companies have regular meetings, as do senior executives, including Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos, who have conference calls every two weeks, according to Sun.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.