One-quarter of the 579 business technology professionals who responded to our 2010 State of Server Technology Survey told us their organizations plan to invest in more physical servers in 2010/11. But far more — 44% — said they intend to decrease their server counts, indicating that system consolidation and virtualization are becoming increasingly critical to efficient data center operations.

Many consider cloud computing a revolution in how we do computing. However, we could find we’re falling back into very familiar and unproductive patterns.

Although clouds can become more effective and efficient ways of using applications, computing, and storage, many clouds are becoming just another set of silos that the enterprises must deal with. But it does not have to be that way — if you learn to recognize the pattern.

Right now, getting help when something unusual goes wrong is a frustrating experience for customers. They’ve come to stereotype the experience as waiting endlessly on hold, deciphering strangely cheerful foreign accents, humoring technicians who are incapable of understanding — let alone answering — their questions, and taking time off to wait for a tech who doesn’t show.

Few IT duties are as universal as the care and feeding of the corporate desktop. While other aspects of IT get easier thanks to new technologies like server virtualization, there’s still no magic pill to alleviate the day-to-day drudgery of maintaining and securing hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of desktop systems.

The drawbacks of desktops go beyond the burdens of management and maintenance. They involve employee mobility, client hardware refreshes, data security, and, under certain conditions, even power consumption and cooling.

A Gartner study of social networks influence on purchasing decisions finds they have become important shopping tools for both retailers and consumers. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are increasingly emerging as important shopping tools for both retailers and shoppers, according to two new reports issued Tuesday.

Citing the importance of social networks in purchasing decisions, Gartner suggests sellers can tailor their online offerings to influence purchasers while a survey from Deloitte indicates that mobile phones and social networking platforms will have an increased influence, soon, in back-to-school shopping.