Server and storage vendor Sun Microsystems has primed open source as the key to future revenue growth after posting flat sales in its 2008 results.

Sluggish conditions in the US ensured revenue for the year to 30 June inched up just 0.1 per cent to $13.88bn (£7bn), while net profit was down 14.8 per cent to $403m. Revenue for 2008's closing quarter actually dropped back 1.4 per cent on Q4 2007 to $3.78bn with net profit plummeting 73.25 per cent to $88m.

Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz said: "On a year-over-year basis, we saw significant improvements across a number of key operating metrics ranging from gross margins to non-GAAP earnings per share and cash flow from operations.

"Despite this progress and strong growth in international geographies, slowing performance in the US impacted top line revenue growth. Looking forward, we remain confident in open source innovation as the accelerant to our growth strategy through increased adoption of our open source offerings - from the OpenSolaris operating system and the MySQL database to the Lustre and ZFS storage systems, the foundation of our open storage platforms."