Ashlee Vance

Ending nearly a year of debate with its users, Sun Microsystems Inc. recently made available on its Web site an early access version of its Solaris 9 operating system that runs on Intel Corp.-compatible processors.

It may not have the air of established respectability that Unix holds, but the Linux operating system took another step towards maturity Wednesday with the announcement of the latest server from IBM Corp.

Hewlett-Packard Co. has altered its corporate structure after reaching several post-merger milestones but is making no changes to its revenue projections despite the continuing tough economic climate, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Carly Fiorina said Tuesday.

Hewlett-Packard Co. detailed a trio of new ProLiant server models on Monday that will support some of the fastest server processors to date from Intel Corp.

The plight faced by storage administrators is clear. Vendors armed with hefty research and development budgets have scrambled to deliver software that could make their customers' lives easier, but thus far the products have failed to live up to their billing, at least according to users in Chicago last September at the Storage Decisions conference.

Hitachi Ltd. and Hewlett-Packard Co. in September extended a partnership to ensure that their respective storage-management software products will interoperate with each other's hardware products.

Ending nearly a year of debate with its users, Sun Microsystems Inc. Monday made available on its Web site an early access version of its Solaris 9 operating system that runs on Intel Corp.-compatible processors.

Dell Computer Corp. and IBM Corp. released their long-awaited blade servers Monday, joining Hewlett-Packard Co. and RLX Technologies Inc. as the major players to have adopted this new technology for keeping computing systems slim.