Social networking driving server sales

Social networking is pushing up server sales despite the increasing adoption of virtualisation technology, according to Sun Microsystems.

Virtualisation squeezes more computing muscle out of fewer physical servers so as its use becomes more widespread it should help slow server sales.

But Richard Green, executive VP of software at Sun, said there is no shortage of demand for hardware because of data-heavy apps like social networking websites demanding more storage space, resulting in server counts "going through the roof".

Sun has been bringing virtualisation into its business for the past few years to help it build revenue, after struggling in the post-dot-com crash period.

But the marrying of virtual and physical tools is causing "real havoc" in data centres with ad hoc, internally developed management tools not doing the job effectively, according to Green.

He said: "The whole idea of any innovation [such as virtualisation] is to give you the tools to throw at a set of problems but with that comes increasing complexity."

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Sun said it will launch an open source virtualisation management tool this December which will be able to run on any operating system.

Earlier this month Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced the company would be merging its server and storage teams into a converged system team, with the aim of putting a stronger focus on virtualisation.