Robert McMillan

Sun Microsystems Inc. may be selling servers running Linux, but that doesn't mean it is cutting back on the evolution of Solaris. Among its plans, the company is considering offering a free, open source version of its flagship operating system, and offering Solaris with a version of its Java Desktop System.

IBM Corp. on Wednesday will announce plans to begin offering new virtualization software and partitioning technology with its servers that will allow them to run as many as 10 versions of an operating system on a single processor.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has gone from an afterthought among server customers to the darling of the enterprise world in just a year. The company

Anouncements made on Thursday have one industry observer noting that changes at Sun Microsystems Inc. could be significant, especially in terms of where the company is heading. Sun on Thursday announced a reorganization of its hardware divisions as well as the departure of two senior executives. The firm also reported a net loss of US$760 million, or US$0.23 per share, in the third quarter of its fiscal 2004 year, which ended March 28.

A U.S. District Court judge has stayed a lawsuit brought by Red Hat Inc. against The SCO Group Inc., saying that the key issues in the case are already being examined in a separate lawsuit brought by SCO against IBM Corp. in Utah.

IBM Corp. will mark the 40th anniversary of the introduction of its first mainframe computer Wednesday by introducing a scaled-down version of its zSeries 990 mainframe servers called the zSeries 890, which IBM is billing as a midmarket mainframe offering.

Hewlett-Packard Co. will begin offering low-cost Fibre Channel disks in July that will cost about one-half the price of current Fibre Channel storage, according to HP.

There will be no JBoss shadow conference at JavaOne this year. The JBoss Group LLC, the Atlanta company that last year hosted its JBossTwo event in conjunction with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s JavaOne developer show in San Francisco, has decided to discontinue its rival conference and take a booth at JavaOne.