Stories by: Deni Connor and Jennifer Mears

Sun Microsystems warned us: You can interview CEO Scott McNealy, but don't ask about the financials, which Sun said will include up to an US$810 million (AUD$1,072m) loss for the latest quarter. We more or less stuck to technology and strategy questions, though interviewers Deni Connor and Jennifer Mears still managed to get a rise out of McNealy.

Storage-area networks have helped scores of organizations more easily allocate and manage storage resources, but most SAN installations are dedicated to servers supporting one application. To gain more value, these SAN islands need to be integrated. But what is the best way to do that?

Dell continues to inch its way deeper into corporate data centers with a standards-based, modular approach to computing that is starting to catch on industrywide. Competitors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), IBM and Sun Microsystems are recognizing a move away from proprietary systems and toward standard, low-cost boxes. But how will Dell - which continues to post positive earnings even in these tough economic times - keep its position as the low-cost leader as other systems vendors move into its territory?

Enhanced system management capabilities, better security, support for third-party drivers and more unity among the various distributions top user wish lists when it comes to Linux. They also would like to see more of their peers embrace the open source operating system as it evolves into a platform capable of supporting even the most-critical layers in the data center.

The SCO Group Inc. announced Monday that it has registered Unix System V source code with the U.S. Copyright Office and that it will offer Linux users licenses of its UnixWare operating system as protection against possible future copyright violations.