Reviews and predictions start off this new year. Take a look back on our top 2007 articles covering Sun news [19232]. And, did you know one of 2007's most underreported IT stories is Sun's turnaround, so says InfoWorld [19218].

Peering ahead, Systems EVP John Fowler offers his perspective on the upcoming year for Sun storage [19182]. IDC also weighs in with its top 10 storage predictions for 2008 [19225].

In OpenSolaris, learn how to enable Solaris CIFS [19203], integrate its application runtime platforms along with NetBeans [19186], and how to install the OS into a virtual machine [19196].

A new program called Sun Sales Connect is aimed at improving sales opportunities for ISVs [19183]. Sun recently realigned its former EMEA region, splitting into two sections [19133]. Find out more of the latest from Sun partners [19227].

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Sun will be buying MySQL AB. Read the details of the planned deal along with Sun CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz's take and access to an audiocast replay of Schwartz, Sun CFO and EVP of Corporate Resources Micheal Lehman, and Sun's VP of Investor Relations Bret Schaefer discussing the acquisition [19311]. In this same replay, the three also review and answer questions on Sun's preliminary financial results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2008 [19312], which shows increases across the board as compared to the same period last year.

In other news, Sun has set a new world record on the Siebel CRM 8.0 PSPP benchmark with Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers, beating IBM POWER6 [19267]. Also recently revealed is the company's plan to eliminate all of its in-house datacenters within the next seven years [19284].

Sun Distinguished Engineer Glenn Brunette has listed the five Solaris 10 OS security features everyone should be using [19270].

Java SE 6 Update 4 [19305] is available for download as is the Java Kernel for Java SE 6 Update N Early Access [19313].

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Sun released the Sun Modular Datacenter (Project Blackbox) along with a suite of services and named recent customers favoring the mobile datacenter [19365]. A feature story highlights a startup planning on setting up these types of mobile datacenters aboard decommissioned ships [19276].

In other Sun news:

• Gartner weighs in on Sun's MySQL acquisition [19372].
• European Commission awards Sun a $141 million contract [19373]
• STAC Benchmark Council adds Sun as a new member and innovation sponsor to the STAC Lab [19366]

This week Sun's Open Source Community Innovation Awards Program released details and judging criteria for each communities' individual programs [19367]. Also newly announced this week, Sun will not only be open sourcing Sun SPOT's Java-ME compliant virtual machine (Squawk), but also Sun SPOT's hardware and software [19343].

The Sun Blade X6250 beat all posted results for FLUENT benchmark test suites [19341].

Learn why the Patch Check Advanced (PCA) may be the only tool you'll ever need for Solaris systems patch management [19208] and how the Service Management Facility for the Solaris OS simplifies management of UNIX operating system services [19207].

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This past week, Sun officially began reselling Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on Sun's x64 systems [19031]. The commercial release of Sun xVM Ops Center 1.0 [19120] has been delayed until next month. For an indepth technical look at xVM, see article [19127] covering Chien-Hua Yen's Sun BluePrint.

Three Sun products nabbed 2008 Technology of the Year awards from InfoWorld. See which products were deemed outstanding [19266]. Sun also entered into an agreement with the Israeli education system, disrupting Microsoft's former monopoly [19219].

Some of Sun's top executives discuss technology trends for 2008 [19255]. Sun Executive VP of Systems John Fowler shares his outlook on virtualization in the x86 market along with other thoughts on the server/storage market [19175].

This week's edition also offers information on using version control software for managing configuration file revisions [19152], Sun Service Tags availability for Linux and Windows [19170], three scripts to use to perform your system checks [19176], and more.

Don't forget the summary of the top stories of 2007 [19232].

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The final results of Sun's second quarter fiscal year 2008 show the company's profits nearly doubling during the three months prior to the period's end of December 30, 2007 [19226].

The MySQL acquisition is still making news. Sun President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz responds to the most speculated points surrounding the takeover [19330]. MySQL CEO Marten Mickos offers his thoughts in a recent interview [19317] as does Open Source Alliance (OSA) President Dominic Sartorio [19316].

The FOSS section also covers the Open Document Format Alliance's report that corrects a recent Burton Group report containing factual errors on the ODF [19333]. Others in the community also are attempting to dispel myths about the standard [19302].

The UltraSPARC T2 has set a new world record single-chip SPECint_rate2006 [19282]. The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers are Gold Award Winners. See by whom and why [19308].

Two recent white papers investigate the capabilities of the Lustre File System [19303], and find out the latest on Lustre since Sun's fall acquisition of Cluster File Systems [19319].

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