Sun Microsystems said Tuesday it plans to acquire innotek, which provides the VirtualBox open source virtualization software package. VirtualBox will extend the Sun xVM virtualization platform onto the desktop, enabling developers to more efficiently build and run applications on multiple platforms, Sun said. With more than 4 million downloads, VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop platform PCs running the Windows, Linux, Mac or Solaris OSes to run multiple operating systems side-by-side. Users can switch between them with a click of a mouse. Developers can more easily build multi-tier or cross-platform applications while power users can take advantage of applications not available on their base operating system of choice, Sun said. “Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the data center, VirtualBox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment and will align perfectly with Sun’s other developer-focused assets such as GlassFish, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and soon MySQL as well as a wide range of community open source projects, enabling developers to quickly develop, test and deploy the next generation of applications,” said Rich Green, executive vice president of Sun Software, in a statement released by the company.Sun on January 16 announced plans to acquire open source database vendor MySQL for $1 billion. Terms of the agreement to acquire innotek were not disclosed, although Sun did note it is to be a stock purchase agreement. The deal is expected to close by March 31. Software Development