(InfoWorld) - BOSTON - Sun Microsystems Inc. will open a European data center to remotely manage customers' systems within the next few months, according to the head of the company's services business. Sun is also considering establishing a similar facility in Asia-Pacific, most likely in China or India.

The move builds on Sun's November 2004 acquisition of U.S. company SevenSpace Inc., a specialist in remotely managing and monitoring heterogenous IT systems and applications, according to Don Grantham, executive vice president of Sun Services. Sun now monitors and remotely manages more than 100 customers' data centers from the former SevenSpace data center in Ashburn, Virginia, he said.

"We're planning to open another data center in Linlithgow, Scotland, in probably a few months' time," Grantham said.

Over time, Sun is looking at siting another remote management data center in Asia-Pacific, Grantham added. "The location is not decided, but we recently consolidated our remote support call centers," he said. "We had nine in Asia and now have two -- one in Bangalore and the other in Beijing. Those [locations] would be the two prime sites we'd look at."

Dependent on the success of the European data center, a similar facility in India or China could open within the next 12 to 18 months, according to Grantham.

Sun is seeing very strong growth in both its managed and preventative services operations, Grantham said, as the company transitions more of its support operations to focus on proactive rather than reactive monitoring. One of the challenges Sun faces is in retraining support staff to carry out remote systems support rather than the traditional call center approach, he added.

The ultimate goal is to provide IT as a service via computer grids, according to Grantham. "The data center of the future will be a virtual place, not a physical place," he said. Customers are already embracing the concept, debating along with IT vendors, how and when the industry will move to grids, Grantham added.

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