Sun Microsystems is offering customers new software that can help them better manage their resources, and reduce the cost and administration associated with popular open source database and application server software.

Called Sun GlassFish and MySQL Unlimited the tools are offered on an annual subscription basis and will the firm said, help manage complex open source environments without relying on a range of administration tools from a number of suppliers.

"With Glassfish and MySQL Unlimited, customers eliminate these proprietary pricing constraints, and gain the flexibility to deploy the latest innovations, for a flat annual subscription - without having to count servers, CPUs, cores or virtual machines. Sun has a trusted relationship with our customers to provide 24x7 enterprise data center support and the software to efficiently manage large scale deployments”, said Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun.

Sun has also announced that it is sponsoring the development of a social networking platform that can be used to run, test and host applications. Currently in beta, Zembly is still in development, but will let firms develop applications that will run across a number of platforms and devices.