GridApp aims to enable 'practical grids'
The company has decoupled hardware from databases to provide dynamic resource allocation and provisioning for clustered databases.
Impact Report by William Fellows, 14 December 2004
NetApp drives Datavan to solve data management on grids
Its 'storage grid' concept is actually concerned with the issue of data management on grids, but being a storage company, it couldn't position its approach as anything less.
Market Development by William Fellows, 13 December 2004
Aristos Logic lands major OEM and starts sampling next UltraSlice processor
The company has finally landed a major OEM for its technology, while its next-generation UltraSlice storage processor has now made it to customers in sample quantities and a third-generation chip is taking shape in its labs.
Impact Report by Greg Quick, 13 December 2004
Project MegaGrid advances commercial agendas for Oracle, Dell, Intel and EMC
It's less about grids and more about marketing, at least in phase one. We'll reserve judgment until subsequent phases have emerged.
Market Development by William Fellows, 10 December 2004
Tacit looks to build WAFS momentum through channel, OEMs
The startup has amassed a 40-strong customer base over the past 18 months through its direct sales efforts. It has launched a channel program to pass the momentum onto a network of resellers and, potentially, OEMs.
Market Development by Simon Robinson, 10 December 2004
Otium's 'cheap and simple' approach looks like good recipe for low-end SRM success
The UK-based startup has scored 80 customers for its Utilistor SRM suite since July, and is looking to repeat this early success in the US and mainland Europe. Its secret is to fly below the radar of the established SRM players.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 9 December 2004
EqualLogic broadens iSCSI storage options with entry-level and high-end arrays
No longer a one-product company, it is focusing on midrange enterprises, which have so far viewed iSCSI with some suspicion. Forthcoming technology developments, including Serial Attached SCSI drives, may help to fix that perception.
Market Development by John Abbott, 9 December 2004
HDS enters SME space with low-end Thunder, its first channel-only product
The company has been working to improve its position in the midrange. Its latest offering is the Thunder 9520V, designed to provide enterprise-class features at a price that's attractive to small to medium-sized enterprises.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 8 December 2004
Amdahl virtualization spinoff PSI revives plug-compatible mainframe concept
IBM faces its first direct competitor since Amdahl and Hitachi pulled out of the PCM sector at the end of 2000. Platform Solutions can run the z/OS operating system on Itanium 2 servers.
Impact Report by John Abbott, 8 December 2004
Cassatt comes out from under the covers
The startup believes it stands at the intersection of commodity software (SOA) and commodity hardware (Wintel/Lintel), which its software will manage, measure and dynamically respond to.
Impact Report by William Fellows, 7 December 2004
NeoPath is latest startup to stake claim on file virtualization
It has released File Director, the latest NAS 'aggregation' product designed to ease the burden of managing large file environments. It joins a growing roster of startups targeting the same opportunity.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 6 December 2004
EMC to focus on virtual infrastructure and ILM in 2005; VMware remains separate
VMware is not part of its information management and storage strategy, but it is key to how EMC's technology becomes a control point for enterprise information and can plug into the 'όber-OS.'
Impact Report by William Fellows, 6 December 2004
ExaGrid debuts Advanstor, an alternative take on Windows-based NAS
The startup has an integrated hardware and software bundle it hopes will gain traction in the underserved midrange network-attached storage space. It claims to be simpler than current methods, but will users warm to the unfamiliar architecture?
Market Development by Simon Robinson, 3 December 2004
Intel seeks to put the focus on functionality rather than gigahertz
Its massive research and development budget, held sacred during the last silicon downturn, is now starting to produce technologies that enhance the overall system performance with features such as security, virtualization and data mining.
Market Development by Greg Quick, 3 December 2004
IBM unveils plan to promote Power architecture as an open industry platform
The idea is to create an open platform based on its Power architecture coupled with Linux that will accelerate adoption of the technology in a wide range of markets, including servers and consumer electronics.
Impact Report by Greg Quick, 2 December 2004
Virtualization, CDP and archiving emerge in StorageTek's 2005 ILM plans
The tape automation giant has made some progress in defining its information lifecycle management business this year, but plenty more is in the pipeline for 2005 as it seeks to put the brakes on stellar growth at EMC and NetApp.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 2 December 2004
Faded star Iomega hopes to shine brightly once more with REV technology
The company that brought the world the once-ubiquitous Zip drive has been suffering a hangover for the past few years. It claims to be back with a new removable storage technology aimed at replacing tape backup in small to midsized firms.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 1 December 2004
Sun overcoming services skepticism with SevenSpace buy
The 'small-footprint' managed service provider will extend Sun's online services support to enterprise applications and databases running on IBM AIX, HP-UX, Windows and Linux platforms. The old outsourcing model is dead, declares Sun.
Market Development by John Abbott, 30 November 2004
Corigin plans FICON bridge to open up IBM's mainframe, storage installed base
The data integration specialist has struggled to establish itself, despite an innovative approach that eliminates the expensive 'mainframe to open systems' data movement process. A pending new product could unlock access to a wider audience.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 30 November 2004
IBM, Sony and Hitachi reveal some details of the Cell, with full disclosure in 2005
The three companies have been working on a new microprocessor, code-named the Cell, and are now providing the first peek. They promise full details at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference.
Market Development by Greg Quick, 29 November 2004
Panasas gears up for assault on commercial, international markets
The Linux cluster storage specialist has gained solid momentum in 2004. A new version of its core ActiveScale File System and plans for international expansion will broaden its appeal, but the market is still nascent.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 29 November 2004
Sanbolic's LaScala volume manager gains native Windows file system support
The transactional clustered volume manager now works transparently with NTFS and native Windows security settings. Sanbolic also has a subset of LaScala as an easier entry point, and is working on product bundles with partners such as LSI.
Market Development by John Abbott, 24 November 2004
Network Appliance embraces virtualization as a step toward the 'storage grid'
Latest release of the high-flying vendor's Data Ontap operating system adds block virtualization for improved provisioning flexibility and it points NetApp toward a longer term, if vague, vision of grid-based storage.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 24 November 2004
Firmware vendor Phoenix pushes on with pre-boot applications plan
Hewlett-Packard is the first taker for the company's FirstWare Assistant, which offers read-only viewing of Microsoft Outlook data without having to boot up Windows. It's also pitching Recover Pro for desktop backup and restore.
Market Development by John Abbott, 23 November 2004
Aarohi sees a shifting storage market and seeks to change with it
The company entered the field as a pure chip play, but as the market matured its demands altered and so has Aarohi's approach.
Impact Report by Greg Quick, 23 November 2004
Fixed-content specialists aim for eye of 'perfect storm'
Archivas and DataCenter Technologies are two startups that hope to feast on the burgeoning demand for storage technologies that can handle the specific requirements of fixed content. Both are gearing up for what they hope will be a big 2005.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 23 November 2004
Rainfinity pitches network file virtualization at NetApp's NearStore
The third-generation file virtualization platform targets Network Appliance's near-line storage family and adds four application modules for users who want to scale up their NAS installations and buy into information lifecycle management.
Market Development by John Abbott, 22 November 2004
Nvidia expands its market through cross-licensing agreements with Intel
The cross-licensing deal will include Intel's front-side bus technology, enabling Nvidia to finally compete in the Intel chipset marketplace. The company already develops chipsets for Advanced Micro Device systems.
Market Development by Greg Quick, 22 November 2004
Intel repositions Itanium as a chip for only the high end
As a replacement processor for HP's PA-RISC, Itanium isn't doing too badly. But Intel's wider ambitions to establish it as an additional 'industry standard' part no longer seem realistic.
Market Development by John Abbott, 19 November 2004
Layer N reinvents itself as Britestream and changes business model
Originally founded as a semiconductor developer, the company has migrated up the development chain to offer complete security modules. The new direction makes its technology easier to test and adopt, but others are likely to follow suit.
Impact Report by Greg Quick, 18 November 2004
MCNC offers test bed for business models, technology and licensing on grids
The North Carolina grid pioneer hosts a Start-Up Grid program on a statewide network it's creating by redeploying the BioGrid. The idea is to let companies test a range of business models and applications to see what works on grids and what doesn't.
Impact Report by William Fellows, 17 November 2004
ADIC combines disk and tape in latest Pathlight backup appliance
EMC disks, ADIC tape libraries and policy management software are combined to boost the performance and capacity of backup while lowering costs. It's the latest tape vendor response to the trend toward disk-based backup.
Market Development by John Abbott, 15 November 2004
Topspin sees sales rise, integrates InfiniBand with IBM blade servers
IBM integration deal and an expanded relationship with Sun and its integration partner EDS are evidence that InfiniBand sales are at last building up. Sales to commercial customers are also starting to happen.
Market Development by John Abbott, 12 November 2004
Broadcom seeks to leverage its integration abilities to drive storage sales
The company is using its existing intellectual property as well as its ability to integrate diverse technologies into single, unified system-on-a-chip products to help drive its silicon efforts in portions of the emerging storage markets.
Impact Report by Greg Quick, 10 November 2004
Intel still placing bets on Itanium, lineup gets facelift with new offerings
The company is back with its long-suffering Itaniums, refreshing the lineup with six additional processors. It's unclear what impact its lower-cost 64-bit offerings will have on sales the new chips, however.
Market Development by Greg Quick, 8 November 2004
RLX turns to Voltaire for integrated InfiniBand inside its blade servers
It claims to be first to have InfiniBand integrated inside the server chassis although Appro and Sun Microsystems are close behind. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster is due in the second half of 2005.
Market Development by John Abbott, 8 November 2004
PathScale introduces high-speed interconnect as its next cluster component
Its starting point was 64-bit cluster-aware compilers, but now it's moving into a more lucrative product sector hardware. The products are aimed at the growing number of Linux clustering systems houses.
Impact Report by John Abbott, 5 November 2004
Brocade flexes midrange muscles with new SilkWorm 4100 family
The midrange market leader looks to maintain its advantage as it becomes the first to provide 4Gbps throughput in an entire family of fabric switches. New mainframe features also bring it up to speed with rivals.
Market Development by Simon Robinson, 4 November 2004
Micron's implementation points to the value of grids beyond chip production
The company's grid deployment has demonstrated some important benefits in a range of application areas. Software licensing, common grid services, enterprise apps on grids and Web services integration are the next challenges.
Impact Report by William Fellows, 3 November 2004
Verari licenses LeftHand's virtualization software for iSCSI storage clusters
The gradual standardization of storage server modules suitable for clustering could open up the market for iSCSI Ethernet-based storage area networks. Hardware vendors like Verari and Rackable are sensing the new opportunity.
Market Development by John Abbott, 2 November 2004
EMC snaps up Allocity for Exchange storage skills
This is EMC's second acquisition of a company specializing in storage software for SMBs in a month. Already a close EMC partner, Allocity provides it with some specific capabilities in helping Exchange users move to SANs.
Market Development by Simon Robinson, 2 November 2004
Searchspace looks beyond fighting money laundering and fraud to grids
The company is planning a new phase adding new apps, enabling grids, opening up its APIs to expand from AML and fraud-detection software. Its exotic technology performs some unique activities, but can it translate this into other applications?
Impact Report by William Fellows, 2 November 2004
StorageTek cranks up ILM effort with virtual tape and 'capacity-centric' storage
The tape giant has added much-needed substance to its ILM vision with its first VTL product for open systems, which will ship next year with a new storage system. It could provide the missing link between its traditional tape and emerging disk products.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 1 November 2004
Sun aims for per-transaction 'utility computing' pricing model
The company is three steps into a pipeline of announcements aimed at keeping the company at the forefront of 'utility' model computing.
Market Development by William Fellows, 29 October 2004
EMC finally unveils virtualization plans with Storage Router
The storage giant will release out-of-band, network-based virtualization technology next year. Its Storage Router will initially aim to alleviate data migration headaches, although more sophisticated functionality is planned.
Impact Report by Simon Robinson, 28 October 2004
Intel targets redesigned Xeons at midlevel storage processor market
The company has also signed a deal that calls for its optical transceiver technology to be used in next-generation host bus adapters that are being designed by Emulex, which will be targeted at the fiber channel storage market.
Impact Report by Greg Quick, 27 October 2004
Synopsys acquisitions driven by increased chip complexity
Reusable IP cores and design-for-manufacturing technology are the drivers behind a series of recent acquisitions by the EDA giant. And there are certainly others still on its shopping list.
Market Development by John Abbott, 26 October 2004
Revivio plans sales expansion, will add replication to continuous protection
The startup has been the de facto mouthpiece of the emerging continuous data protection sector since its launch, but it's now adding some substance to its lofty ambitions with its first two dozen customers.
Market Development by Simon Robinson, 26 October 2004
Egenera's key challenge: customers' organizational and cultural issues
Its BladeFrame product lets companies share and re-purpose resources that were previously discrete systems owned by different groups but the promise of less cost and complexity appears likely to overcome adoption hurdles.
Impact Report by William Fellows, 25 October 2004
ARM continues to pressure the competition with new processor technology
Its latest offering is the Cortex-M3 processor, a product that ARM has tailored for the low-cost, high-performance sector in the embedded market. It expects the chip to be used in products like microcontrollers and networking devices.
Market Development by Greg Quick, 22 October 2004
|
