Jennifer Mears and Deni Connor

Sun next week hopes to step up its position in the exploding low-end server market by introducing its Opteron-based Galaxy machines, with a focus on high performance, better cooling and advanced manageability.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is readying server management software that should give users control of Unix, Linux and Windows machines from a single console, a capability analysts say will be particularly important as businesses consolidate workloads to boost efficiencies in their data centers.