the
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the SSD Buyers Guide
the Top 10 SSD Companies
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Other
storage news on this
page
Atempo Secures Backup
Exabyte Reports Mixed Revenue
Signals
Mobile Military Storage Keeps Data Secure
NeoScale
Ships Storage VPN Appliance
The 1st Ultra320 SCSI Flash Solid State
Disk
Hitachi Ships 15,000 RPM 2.5" HDD
Overland Reports
5% Revenue Growth
Sun Extends OEM Agreement with Engenio
Dell's
Data Recovery Demo Bridges Atlantic
Northern Enhances US Channel
Program
Western Digital Gains Market Share
SanDisk's Flash
Targets Cellphone Video
InfiniBand Slashes Backup Time and Cost
Seagate Launches Pocket Hard Drive
Spectra Logic Accelerates
iSCSI Backup
CNT's New Replication Appliance
LSI Logic
Samples 4Gbps Fibre Channel
First Compliant LTO Ultrium 3 Tapes
last week's news
(archive) |
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NAS on
STORAGEsearch.com |
| "The
storage network is the computer" said Megabyte, misquoting something he'd
heard in the sunny days of his youth... | |
Nibble:
What Can We Learn from Storage Leaders
Whose Revenues are Declining? |
STORAGEsearch is
upbeat about the storage market, and there have been so many companies
reporting revenue growth this year that I set the entry point to our
Fastest Growing List
at 31% to keep the list manageable.
But can we also learn something,
or try to deduce what's happening, from companies, which in a growing storage
market, report declining revenue?
Declining storage revenue can
sometimes signal a changing pattern of technology or usage which it may be
important for you to know about. Or it can be just a blip - nothing to worry
about. So, I picked out some examples of companies, which are leaders in their
own field, but which have reported declining revenues during the most recent
quarter.
Seagate
- the world's leading maker of
hard disk drives -
reported revenue down 10%.
That's similar to the 9%
revenue decline reported by
Maxtor. Meanwhile
Western Digital
reported revenue up 15%.
So what's happening?
It's a
mixed picture and several factors are at work here. First - disk manufacturers
have historically been lowering prices at a faster pace than they have been
increasing capacity. That means even if the volume of drives in the PC and
server markets increases - the disk revenues from the IT market as a whole may
still decline or stay flat. The other problem is that new markets for disk
drives - like digital cameras, and digital music players have mainly been using
Flash Memory instead of
the small form factor (1 inch and under) hard drives which manufacturers hoped
they would. For some disk manufacturers, the use of hard drives in tvs, games
and other consumer products accounts for about 10% of their revenue - but that
has slowed the downward revenue trend rather than turned it around.
Western
Digital has been more successful in getting its drives used in these new
consumer markets. WD's chairman and CEO, Matt Massengill, said "Personal
entertainment applications such as game consoles and digital video recorders,
as we continued to expand our presence in markets outside our traditional
stronghold of desktop PCs." But their figures show that Western Digital has
also been winning market share in the PC market.
Emulex - the world's
leading maker of Fibre-channel
adapter cards - reported revenue down 13%.
This doesn't
signify decreasing popularity of Fibre-channel technology, because Emulex's
main rival QLogic
reported revenue 2% up. Also the
iSCSI market has
been too small to make any dent in the Fibre-channel SAN market in 2004. And
market research company Dell'Oro
Group has predicted 11% annual growth for the FC host bus adapter market
for the next several years. We may see a short term blip in the market as users
wait to see what happens with 4Gbps products, like those sampling this month
from LSI Logic.
I've
been saying for years that the writing is on the wall for tape backup as nearly
everyone will transition to disk to disk backup in the next several years due to
its faster speed, lower cost and greater storage density.
As part of
this change, most tape library manufacturers have long ago introduced D2d
options within their product lines, although it is doubtful that many of these
will stand the price competition from pure
RAID systems makers.
However, bucking this trend is tape library maker
Overland Storage which
cited fast growth in its D2d products contributing to its 5% revenue growth
in the recent quarter.
Quantum's recent
acquisition of Certance
is part of a consolidation we're going to see more of as the tape market shrinks
down to about 5 companies in 2007. | | |
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| Since 1978,
Texas Memory Systems
has designed,manufactured, and marketed the fastest storage subsystems
available. |
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Atempo Secures
Backup
PALO ALTO and SAN
DIEGO, Calif. – October 28, 2004 – Atempo Inc. and Secure
Science Corporation today announced a strategic alliance whereby the
companies will collaborate on ways to enhance the security features of Atempo's
data lifecycle management suite of products.
"Security of
captured data at all levels is essential for any cradle-to-grave ILM strategy
and implementation," said Michael Johnson, Business Development Manager at
Secure Science Corporation. "We welcome the opportunity to work with Atempo
to provide leading edge security capabilities."
...Atempo profile,
Backup software
Exabyte Reports Mixed Revenue Signals
BOULDER, CO -
October 28, 2004 - Exabyte Corporation today announced revenue of $23.6
million and a net loss of $3.9 million for the third quarter ended September 30.
Revenue increased 2.6% compared to the year ago quarter but decreased 11.2%
sequentially.
"Despite the decrease in revenue for the third
quarter, our confidence in the ultimate market opportunity for our VXA and LTO
products continues to grow," noted Tom Ward, President and CEO of Exabyte. "Collaboration
with our OEM customers continues to generate very strong growth in VXA-2 drive
sales, which we believe is a significant indicator of market acceptance and
future growth."
...Exabyte profile,
Tape drives
Mobile Military Storage Keeps Data Secure
SNW,
Orlando, FL - October 26, 2004 - Smartronix, Decru, Inc., and
Network Appliance, Inc. today announced a secure storage solution
designed for forward-deployed military environments.
The
Expeditionary Encrypted Data Store combines NetApp storage systems with Decru
DataFort storage security appliances in a ruggedized, portable case. EEDS
delivers reliable, intuitive storage functionality paired with powerful security
features to support a broad range of missions.
Increasingly, modern military operations require forward deployment of
computing systems, in environments ranging from aircraft and armored vehicles to
embassies and mountaintops. These "net-centric" systems provide
tremendous strategic advantages, but also expose an increasing amount of
sensitive or classified data to new security threats. Forward-deployed computer
systems present a particularly difficult challenge, because physical capture of
mission data and software could expose vast amounts of actionable intelligence
to adversaries. Due to the power of modern forensic tools, data stored on disk
drives is essentially indelible, further complicating the task of sanitizing
data on short notice.
The Expeditionary Encrypted Data Store solution takes a simple
approach: never store mission data in cleartext format. All data and
applications are secured with strong encryption, and in the event of imminent
capture, warfighters can use Decru CryptoShred features to instantly delete
local encryption keys by pushing a button or turning a key. Because encryption
keys are stored in secure hardware, and data is never written to disk in
cleartext format, deleting the keys provides instant sanitization of the entire
system. Backup encryption keys are securely stored at headquarters, and can be
securely injected into DataFort over the Global Information Grid, enabling rapid
operational recovery from false alarms. EEDS also enables operators to
temporarily lock down systems by removing a cryptographic "ignition key"
stored on a smart card. The solution is available immediately from Smartronix,
with turnkey solutions starting at under $100,000 ...NetApp profile,
Military Storage
NeoScale Ships Storage VPN Appliance
MILPITAS,
Calif. - October 26, 2004 - NeoScale Systems today announced the
availability of its new CryptoStor SAN VPN appliance.
CryptoStor
SAN VPN is the industry's first security appliance that is designed to support
the demanding latency and performance requirements of real time storage
applications across a Metropolitan Area Network. SAN VPN utilizes AES-256 to
encrypt Fibre Channel links that traverse public fiber networks for high
performance, low latency SAN extension. It secures SAN traffic in a manner
which is invisible to the storage applications and the network. It delivers
native Fibre Channel performance with minimal latency overhead and optionally
compresses traffic to maximize the utilization of lower speed fiber MAN
connections. SAN VPN is compatible with optical MAN technologies, such as DWDM
or SONET edge devices. NeoScale's CryptoStor SAN VPN will ship in November
with prices starting at $40,000.
...NeoScale Systems
profile, Storage
Security
The 1st Ultra320 SCSI Flash Solid State Disk
Washington, DC
- October 26, 2004 - BiTMICRO Networks today announced at Association
of the United State Army Annual Meeting in Washington, DC its recent
shipment of the E-Disk 3S320D - the world's first Ultra320 SCSI flash solid
state disk.
The E-Disk 3S320D conforms to the ANSI SCSI-3
SPI-4 standards and is ideal for embedded and applied computing applications
that require high reliability, performance, data security, and ruggedness, such
as telecom infrastructure network elements, pipeline monitoring, digital
mapping, financial on-line transactions, and homeland defense security.
The
E-Disk Ultra320 SCSI is OS independent and features up to 42 µsec access
time and a maximum IOPS of 12,500. Sustained R/W rate is 68MB/sec (max) and
burst R/W rate is 320MB/sec (max). This pure solid state/non-volatile drive can
handle operating shock of up to 1500 Gs and extreme temperatures from -40 to +85°C.
MTBF is 2 million hours. Available in a
3.5-inch form factor,
maximum capacity for the E-Disk Ultra320 SCSI is 155GB. The drive has a half
pitch DB68 connector compliant with SCSI ANSI standards, does not require any
device driver, and is completely bootable. The E-Disk Ultra320 SCSI product line
is fully compatible with major platforms such as Linux, Solaris, Windows, MacOS
and LynxOS, AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, NetBSD, OS/2, QNX, VxWorks, SCO Unixware
and Open Server, Solaris x86, and Tru64.
...BiTMICRO Networks
profile, Solid state disks,
Military Storage,
SCSI cards
Hitachi Ships 15,000 RPM 2.5" HDD
SAN
JOSE, CA - October 26, 2004 - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today
introduced the Ultrastar 15K147, a high-performance, highly reliable enterprise
disk drive, designed to excel in mission-critical computing environments.
The 15,000 RPM drive is Hitachi's highest-performer, delivering as
much as 33% more IOPS than current-generation 10,000 RPM products. This
performance breakthrough enables customers to address their throughput
requirements using fewer drives, reducing total cost of ownership. The price
performance characteristics of the new Ultrastar drive make it an ideal solution
for online transaction processing, intensive database queries and other
multi-user applications. The Ultrastar 15K147 delivers average seek times as
low as 3.3 ms and the 15,000 RPM rotation speed reduces average latency time to
2 ms, enabling customers to access data more quickly and efficiently. The drives
feature a large, 16 MB cache that minimizes command overhead and improves
average read/write response time. The Ultrastar 15K147 is available in 36, 73
and 147 GB capacities and in Ultra 320 SCSI and 2 Gb/s FCAL interfaces. The
Ultrastar 15K147 is currently shipping to customers worldwide
...Hitachi profile,
hard disk drives
Overland Reports 5% Revenue Growth
SAN
DIEGO - October 26, 2004 - Overland Storage, Inc. today announced
results for its fiscal 2005 first quarter ended Sept. 30.
Revenue
for the fiscal 2005 first quarter increased 5% to $59.5 million
compared with the same period last year. Net income for the first quarter was
$1.9 million.
"I am especially pleased with the steep ramp of REO, with unit
sales growing 78% sequentially over the fourth quarter of 2004," said
Christopher Calisi, president and CEO. For fiscal 2005 the company confirmed its
earlier guidance of revenue growth of 10%.
...Overland Storage
profile, History of
Enterprise Disk to Disk Backup
Sun Extends OEM Agreement with Engenio
Milpitas, CA - October
26, 2004 - Engenio Information Technologies, Inc. today announced that
it has broadened its OEM agreement with Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Engenio will provide Sun with new modular storage technology and will co-develop
future Sun storage products. The first Sun product to emerge through the new
arrangement was announced today at Storage Networking World.
...Engenio profile,
...Sun profile,
SAN,
Sun VARs
Dell's Data Recovery Demo Bridges Atlantic
Orlando,
FL - October 25, 2004 - Customers visiting Dell's booth here at Storage
Networking World this week can observe a demonstration of data failover and
recovery from a site in Limerick, Ireland to a site near Austin, Texas.
Using an Exchange 2003 messaging solution, the Dell Business
Continuity demonstration shows data being replicated in real time between two
Dell/EMC mid-range storage systems separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Within
minutes of an application failure in Limerick, asynchronous mirroring enables
the recovery location in Central Texas to be running and fully processing
transactions for a total solution cost of less than $300,000. Asynchronous Data
Replication enables customers to mirror their data from site- to-site using IP
instead of costly Fibre Channel networks. Customers can choose disaster recovery
sites that are farther away from the primary storage location, are less costly
and provide greater security.
...Dell profile,
Data recovery,
SAN Routers,
iSCSI
Northern Enhances US Channel Program
TAMPA, FL - October
26, 2004 - NORTHERN today announces an Enhanced Channel Partners program
for resellers across North America.
The centerpiece of the program
is Northern Storage Suite, a flexible and affordable approach to storage
resource management - clear differentiators in a highly competitive market. 61%
of the Fortune Global 100 use Northern software which provides an excellent base
of reference customers. ...Northern
profile
Western Digital Gains Market Share
LAKE
FOREST, Calif. - October 25, 2004 - Western Digital Corp. today
reported revenues of $824 million on shipments of approximately 14.2 million
units, and net income of $30.4 million for its first fiscal quarter ended Oct.
1, 2004.
On a year-over-year basis, revenue grew 15% and
units increased 26%. In the first quarter, OEM customers accounted for
approximately 59% of revenue, versus 53% of revenue in both the preceding and
year ago periods.
Matt Massengill, chairman and CEO, stated: "In
the first quarter, we met seasonally stronger demand from our customers in the
desktop PC and personal entertainment markets. We shipped approximately 1.8
million hard drives into personal entertainment applications such as game
consoles and digital video recorders, as we continued to expand our presence in
markets outside our traditional stronghold of desktop PCs."
...Western Digital
profile, Hard disk
drives
Editor's comments:- in contrast, the other 2 big disk
makers Seagate and Maxtor reported revenue declines for the same quarter. See
sidebar article.
SanDisk's Flash Targets Cellphone Video
San
Francisco, CA - October 25, 2004 - SanDisk Corporation today
introduced the highest capacity yet for its small TransFlash memory module, a
256MB unit that will help meet the demands of new feature phones for greater
storage of digital music, video, digital photos and GPS navigation software.
The announcement was made at CTIA Wireless I.T. &
Entertainment 2004 where SanDisk is exhibiting. The TransFlash module is
about one quarter of the size of a standard SD card but can be inserted into an
adapter and used in SD-enabled devices. It is the world's smallest
removable flash memory module, measuring 15 x 11 x 1 millimeters or roughly the
size of a fingernail. SanDisk expects to supply worldwide OEM and retail
customers with the 256MB model starting in December.
Alan Niebel, primary analyst for
Web-Feet Research
said that one of the new functions demanding more memory is video. "With
TransFlash reaching 256MB capacity and beyond, the video market on cell phones
opens up for storing large amounts of data on the smallest form factor
available. Phones that are capable of putting video on TransFlash modules will
be able to capture and play back television broadcasts, sports and news clips,
movie and music video trailers, and some advertisements." Niebel forecasts
that video stored in mobile phones could become one of the largest consumers of
flash memory, reaching over $3.6 billion by 2009.
...SanDisk profile,
Flash Memory
InfiniBand Slashes Backup Time and Cost
SNW, ORLANDO, FLORIDA
- October 25, 2004 - Mellanox Technologies Ltd today announced a native
InfiniBand storage platform that can significantly cut Oracle Database 10g
backup and restore costs and gain in operational time when compared to mid-range
Fibre Channel storage solutions.
Mellanox tested Oracle Database
10g backup and restore operations on the MTD1000 - a low cost native InfiniBand
storage development platform that is based on commodity server components and
SATA disk drives. This storage platform is designed to speed time to market for
storage OEM and integrators.
In low level tests using the IOMETER benchmark, the native InfiniBand
storage solution delivers over 800MB/s throughput to the disks - more than 4
times the measured performance of 2Gb/s Fibre Channel platforms costing
considerably more.
"Record backup and recovery benchmarks
utilizing native InfiniBand storage solutions extends the value proposition for
using InfiniBand to interconnect server clusters simply and efficiently to large
volumes of storage in the data center," stated Eyal Waldman, CEO, Mellanox
Technologies. "With broad industry support and a well defined roadmap to
120Gb/s, Mellanox's InfiniBand solutions will continue to lead the
price/performance curve for both, clustered server and storage interconnect
solutions."
Mellanox's MTD1000 InfiniBand storage development
platform offers redundant power supplies and fans, integrated dual port
InfiniBand PCI Express Host Channel Adapter, and up to 3.75TBs of storage. The
storage platform delivers over 800MB/s of throughput to the drives through a
single InfiniBand 10Gb/s link. It costs $11,999 and comes standard with 1.1TB
of storage and InfiniBand target driver software.
...Mellanox
Technologies profile,
InfiniBand
Seagate Launches Pocket Hard Drive
SCOTTS VALLEY,
Calif. - October 25, 2004 - Seagate Technology announced today its
innovative new 5GB Pocket Hard Drive and 100GB Portable External Hard Drive are
now available in major retail stores.
The new Seagate USB 2.0
Pocket Hard Drive is the biggest small hard drive on the planet. |
Safely encased in its sleek
palm-sized shell, it's as convenient as a USB thumb drive yet offers 5GB of
storage for transporting or quickly backing up a huge amount of data, pictures,
audio or video files.
The Seagate Pocket Hard Drive has a stylish,
round design less than 3 inches in diameter. Its round shape with retractable
USB cable is designed to move in and out of a pocket easily, and its rubberized
feet keep it still on the desktop when it's not in transit. |
 |
With its
robust design and high shock tolerance it enables mobility and delivers high
performance, low power consumption and reliability. The Seagate Pocket Hard
Drive also includes toolkit software for data security and easy content
management, letting users password protect their hard drive.
...Seagate profile,
USB storage,
1 inch drives
Spectra Logic Accelerates iSCSI Backup
BOULDER,
Colo. - October 25, 2004 - Today, Spectra Logic introduced the first
storage automation product line with performance-boosting TCP/IP off-load engine
technology.
TOE is tightly integrated with the libraries'
Gigabit Ethernet controllers, which enable iSCSI. Libraries, with TOE, process
TCP/IP packets, removing that burden from the network, so that data transfer can
take advantage of greater network bandwidth.
"The T-series product line, T120 and T950, is the storage
industry's first libraries
that natively incorporate this exciting technology" said Hossein
ZiaShakeri, Spectra Logic's senior vice president of strategic marketing and
business development.
...Spectra Logic
profile, iSCSI
CNT's New Replication Appliance
SNW,
ORLANDO, FL - October 25, 2004 - CNT today announced the availability
of the UltraNet Replication Appliance.
Enabling new levels of data
protection for customers, the URA provides a complete suite of SAN-based local
and remote heterogeneous data replication services over unlimited distances. In
addition, CNT announced that the CNT URA has completed interoperability testing
under the IBM TotalStorage Proven Program.
Longtime CNT customer Lockheed Martin chose the URA because it
provided a cost-effective way to reduce backup times. They can use their
existing enterprise disk for their production databases and use the URA's
snapshot replication capabilities to back up data changes on a nightly basis to
lower cost disk. The URA also simplifies management of their backup process,
saving valuable administrator time. Its ability to support data replication
among heterogeneous storage environments provides Lockheed Martin a great deal
of flexibility in building their infrastructure, and as their needs evolve, the
URA will support new applications such as remote disk mirroring and data
migrations.
The URA's full replication portfolio includes local and remote
mirroring, snapshot replication with delta and the ability to roll-back to
previous snapshots to recover from logical errors. By leveraging CNT's
award-winning and patented extension technology, end users can maximize the
utilization of their network bandwidth and be assured of the highest performance
over any distance.
...CNT profile,
SAN routers
LSI Logic Samples 4Gbps Fibre Channel
MILPITAS,
Calif. - October 22, 2004 - LSI Logic today announced OEM sample
availability of 4Gbps Fibre Channel controller ICs and HBAs.
Delivering twice the performance of 2Gb/s technology, while maintaining backward
compatibility, the LSIFC949X provides end-to-end data protection and is ideal
for embedded applications such as RAID storage systems. In addition, the
LSIFC949X integrates context memory, which is ideal for cost effective small to
medium sized businesses and Blade server applications.
"With
storage area networks continuing to penetrate the market and the SMB/SME space,
it is essential that users have access to cost-effective solutions that ease the
migration from 2Gb applications to 4Gb," said Charlie Kraus, director of
HBA marketing for the LSI Logic Storage Standard Products division. "As we
begin sampling our 4Gb technology, customers can be assured that we are
delivering a solution that not only doubles the performance of the current Fibre
Channel generation, but also reduces costs and protects previous Fibre Channel
investments."
...LSI Logic profile,
Fibre-channel adapters
First Compliant LTO Ultrium 3 Tapes
FAIR LAWN,
NJ - October 22, 2004 - Maxell Corporation of America today announced
it has successfully completed the world's first LTO3 compliance verification
tests.
The compliance verification process involves an exhaustive
series of tests for proving compatibility with other drives and media. Maxell
Ultrium media users can be 100% confident of interchange compatibility with all
brands of Ultrium drives and media. Maxell's new LTO Ultrium 3 media offers
capacities of 800GB compressed (400GB native) and supports speeds of up to 160
GB per hour delivered by LTO3 tape drives. LTO Ultrium technology is
backward-compatible with earlier generations, allowing LTO3 users continued
access to Ultrium 1 and 2 tape archives and providing investment security for
years to come.
...Maxell profile |
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