“The coming few years will feature continued consolidation, financial pressures and changes to the hardware business, requiring different IT strategies for the future than what people have been using in the past.”  That’s according to IT consultancy Gartner, which made these predictions during its Hardware Insight conference in Redwood Shores, CA, on Thursday.  “In the next four years,” writes IT news website Internetnews.com, “Gartner sees continued consolidation of vendors, consolidation of servers through virtualization, a move toward green IT, an expansion of cloud computing and ‘hardware as a service’ – i.e. hardware rental.”

Newsfactor Network reports that “Bach Khoa Internetwork Security, a security-research firm in Vietnam, claims to be the first to

[have discovered] a critical vulnerability in Google’s Chrome browser.  ‘This is the first critical Chrome vulnerability permitting [a] hacker to perform a remote code-execution attack and take complete control of the affected system,’ the firm wrote in its Sept. 5 advisory. While four Chrome vulnerabilities were discovered, Bach Khoa said the ‘Save As’ flaw is the only one that can allow an attacker to launch remote attacks from a victim’s PC. Other vulnerabilities just crash the browser.”

The Wall Street Journal reveals that “[s]ome of the country’s biggest marketers are rallying to oppose an advertising deal between Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., as the Justice Department considers whether to go to court to block the agreement.  The Association of National Advertisers, a trade group that represents major companies like Procter & Gamble Co. and General Motors Corp., sent a letter to the Justice Department Thursday calling the deal bad for advertisers and recommending that it be blocked. The group announced the letter on its Web site on Sunday. The agreement, announced in June, gives Web-search giant Google the right to sell search and other text ads on Yahoo sites, sharing the revenue with Yahoo.”

eWeek.com writes that “Sun Microsystems and its longtime top-tier rival, Microsoft, continue to come to technological common ground that would have been impossible to imagine just two years ago.  At a daylong launch event in Bellevue, Wash., Sun and Microsoft announced new cross-platform virtualization initiatives Sept. 8 that validate Sun’s new xVM virtualization platform to run on Windows servers 2008, 2003 and 2000.  Sun and Microsoft also are in the process of engineering compatibilities for Sun’s Solaris operating system to run as a certified guest on Windows Server on Microsoft’s Hyper-V, which is scheduled to be available with the Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2.  […]  Finally, Sun is expanding its support for Microsoft enterprise software by providing Sun Ray thin-client customers the ability to access Windows as a guest operating system running on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.”

And in more news on Microsoft and Hyper-V, CNetNews.com reports that “Microsoft said on Monday that it now plans to offer its server virtualization product for free.  Ahead of a virtualization event in Redmond, Wash., Microsoft said that its Hyper-V Server 2008 will be released within 30 days and be available at no cost via the Web. The software maker had planned to charge $28 for the product.  Also on Monday, Microsoft plans to show off a live migration feature that will be part of the next version of its Hyper-V virtualization technology. Live migration allows companies to move a running virtual machine from one server to another.  The feature will be part of Windows Server R2, Microsoft said Monday. The software maker had originally intended to make Live Migration part of the first Hyper-V product, but pulled the feature in order to try to make its shipping deadline.  Microsoft also said that major computer makers note that nearly all of their customers who order Windows Server 2008-based systems are opting to include Hyper-V. Microsoft finalized the Hyper-V code back in June.”