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| Memtech's
Solid State Flash Drives Target Kiosks Livermore, CA - January 31, 2005 - Memtech today launched the AT2515 and AT3515 Bulldog - an entry level, low cost, 2.5" and 3.5", 128Mbyte to 1Gbyte drive aimed at the high volume user. |
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| These entry level drives never compromise Memtech's reputation for delivering the most reliable, ruggedized solid state flash drive in the market today. All drives offer impressive endurance, an 8-year warranty, are designed for Industrial and Military environments where down time and failure is not an option. Memtech drives deliver advanced features such as the Kicker Hold Up Circuit, ECC Data Protection and resistance to 2,000G operating shock, 20G vibration and extreme temperature environments. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Memtech drives are
designed for low power consumption in critical operating conditions and are
built to withstand extreme temperature, pressure, moisture, shock, vibration and
power loss. Each drive is guaranteed for life and goes through Memtech's
rigorous five-step EnduroTest process which includes read-write data integrity
testing at temperatures as low as -40°C and as high as +85°C.
Memtech drives are in use in government and industrial systems used in scientific expeditions, transportation, military operations and law enforcement. Memtech solid state flash drives are also used as an integral part of systems installed in submarines, space vehicles, aircraft carriers, high altitude balloons, high-speed locomotives, oil and gas pipelines, drilling rigs, weapons systems, mining equipment, combat aircraft, manufacturing and smelting plants, digital switching, routing and networking systems. The AT2515 and AT3515 Bulldog will address the fastest growing segment of the solid state flash drive market, entry level, low cost solutions for Thin Clients and Kiosks. ...Memtech profile, Solid state disks Storability Announces Global Storage Manager 4 SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass. - January 31, 2005 - Storability Software today announced the immediate availability of Global Storage Manager Version 4. This latest version delivers appropriate storage management capabilities to every level of the organization ensuring that compliance level executives, storage administrators and IT managers have the appropriate information they need to make better business decisions. Large enterprises can view technical storage information in a business context, broadening their understanding of the storage infrastructure and the impact it has – and their decisions have – on the business as a whole. "A key reason for GSM's success in the market has been its depth of reporting capabilities and ability to identify areas for storage savings," said Joel Kimball, StorageTek president and GM of Storability Software. "With V4, we have taken this reporting feature a step further allowing our customers to use the valuable business analytics to minimize risk and meet compliance requirements. Customers are also using GSM for capacity planning and budgeting based upon their ability to accurately view storage usage by application or business unit." ...Storability profile AutoPilot Simplifies Emulex HBA Installation COSTA MESA, Calif. - January 31, 2005 - Emulex Corporation today announced its new Enterprise AutoPilot Installer software for Windows-based enterprise storage environments. Enterprise AutoPilot Installer has new automation capabilities that significantly reduce the time and complexity (only 6 mouse clicks for all HBAs installed in a system) associated with deploying and upgrading Emulex host bus adapters. ...Emulex profile BakBone's CEO Publishes Open Letter Editor:- January 31, 2005 - BakBone Software is a company which has had a lot of financial reporting problems in the past year and some executive churn. Today their new president and CEO, Jim Johnson, has published an open letter to shareholders, customers and strategic partners to say what's going on. The gist is that everything's going OK (apart from the financial reporting) and they are in good financial shape. This kind of publicity can be a two edged sword. On the one hand - if you didn't know about their problems before - you sure do now. But on the other hand - the letter lists all the company's recent successes and milestones. As a publicity tactic this letter might work for them - but it's the kind of risky PR communication which one shouldn't plan on doing very often. ...read the letter, ...BakBone Software profile Aleratec DVD/CD Duplicators do 16x double layer CHATSWORTH, Calif. - January 31, 2005 - Alera Technologies is introducing a new generation of its Award Winning DVD/CD Duplicator Solutions. The Aleratec DVD/CD Copy Cruiser Pro 16 1:1 stand alone DVD/CD Duplicator copies DVDs at up to 16x with no computer required. The new "Pro 16" also supports 8.5GB Double Layer recording technology so users can copy 8.5GB DVDs on Double Layer media. The distinctive "professional black" design fits perfectly in any environment, from the computer room to the Hollywood Studio. The DVD/CD Copy Cruiser Pro 16 is two systems in one, a powerful stand alone 16x DVD/CD duplicator and a state of the art 16x DVD Recorder that can be connected to your computer with the USB 2.0 connection. Simply load the powerful software included, and create your own custom DVDs at up to 16x. It comes complete with the tools to author professional video presentations and put them on DVD discs in a format that can be played back on most DVD set top players and computer DVD-ROM drives. Nero Authoring and Writing Suite, MusicMatch Jukebox and Cyberlink PowerDVD are included FREE! with purchase providing users with the tools to record and share videos, record audio and data, and backup their PCs the easiest way. The new DVD/CD Copy Cruiser uses Dual Standard DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW Technology supporting all popular DVD formats and has an estimated street price of $399. ...Alera Technologies profile SteelEye Launches LifeKeeper Protected Program Palo Alto, CA - January 27, 2005 - SteelEye Technology today announced the LifeKeeper Protected Program designed to make it faster, easier and more economical for ISVs to build high availability and disaster recovery protection into their applications. One of the most powerful features of LifeKeeper is its ability to provide application monitoring and high availability protection without requiring any modification of applications or the application environment. This has enabled SteelEye to deliver protection for the widest range of technologies and leading database products such as Apache, IIS, NFS, Samba, LVM, MySQL, DB2, PostgreSQL, Sybase, SQL Server and Oracle, as well as mission critical applications such as mySAP, Exchange and Sendmail. ...SteelEye profile Arkeia Offers Unix Protection to White Box OEMs CARLSBAD, Calif. - January 27, 2005 - Arkeia Corporation today launched a worldwide initiative dubbed `Jump Start' that offers white box and appliance system builders the ability to market fully integrated data protection solutions based on the company's Linux backup and recovery software. The strategic initiative is spearheaded by Dave Elliott, Arkeia's new director of business development. "Arkeia is the undisputed data protection choice for Linux environments," stated Jason Makevich, president of Flashbak, Inc. "By leveraging Arkeia's new Jump Start Program and bundling Arkeia Server Backup with the Flashbak appliance, we are able to deliver an unrivaled data protection solution. Most importantly, Arkeia is easy to work with and offers outstanding benefits to companies building Linux-powered appliances." ...Arkeia profile hIOmon Exports File I/O Metrics to Spreadsheets BOULDER, Colorado - January 27, 2005 - hyperI/O LLC announced today that its hIOmon File I/O Performance Monitor now provides the option of saving the real-time file I/O operation performance metrics collected by the package for spreadsheet analysis and customized reporting. The company also announced that its latest release of hIOmon additionally extends this new 'Direct Export File' feature to include support for the MXG Software from Merrill Consultants. hIOmon is a software package that provides a variety of significant benefits, including the ability to better diagnose and understand storage access performance problems, to verify and ensure that required levels of performance (Quality-of-Service) are being met at the specific file/process level, to evaluate emerging storage technologies (e.g., iSCSI, SATA, etc.) and proposed improvements to the performance of computer systems, and to help reduce storage management costs. End-users, integrators and Independent Software Vendors alike find it easy to tap into the hIOmon agent. Users/applications armed with the extensive set of file I/O performance metrics which hIOmon provides can validate and verify that steps taken to maximize disk storage utilization are indeed of benefit. Such steps include identifying 'hot files' and moving files around the storage hierarchy, SAN, NAS, etc. to improve performance by making the best use of newly purchased hardware or without spending IT dollars on new hardware. Use hIOmon to help identify those files best suited for SSD, RAM disk and other higher performance disk solutions. Pricing starts at $195. ...hyperI/O profile, Test tools and software Editor's comments:- in the past storage buyers have been mainly focused on storage capacity and accessability - because failures in these areas lead to crashed applications, unhappy users or non compliance. I predict that storage performance will become a more important factor in coming years as users start to understand the negative impact that mediocre storage performance can have on their server budgets. After all you don't buy a car just because it has the right number of seats do you? Incipient, Inc., Secures $20M Series C Funding Waltham, MA. - January 26, 2005 - Incipient, Inc. today announced it has successfully closed a third round of $20 million in equity financing, bringing total equity capital raised to $55 million. GrandBanks Capital led the Series C round, with full participation from existing major investors; Globespan Capital Partners, Greylock, HLM Venture Partners, and Sigma Partners. Proceeds of this latest round will be targeted for advanced development, as well as executing on go-to-market relationships with existing and prospective OEM business partners. "The Incipient Network Storage Platform Suite is a new breed of storage software that will enable intelligent switch platforms to deliver heterogeneous network-based storage management and copy services," said Nancy Hurley, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "The benefits of this network-based solution not only enable ILM strategies but it also improves capacity utilization, and automates key management tasks such as data migration and copy services." ...Incipient profile, Squeak! - Venture funds in STORAGE Solid State Disk Market Survey Results Editor:- January 26, 2005 - the results of the STORAGEsearch.com Solid State Disk Buyer Market Survey are published today. STORAGEsearch has been charting the rise of the Solid State Disk Market for a number of years. In Q4 2004 we ran the industry's first major market survey designed to learn more about buyers needs and preferences. This article provides a summary of highlights from the survey results. The survey has identified technical gaps which require new product solutions and service gaps which require changes in the marketing plans of SSD vendors who need to change the way they do business. SSD vendors must take note of the signals flagged in this survey if they wish to transform this market segment from a niche technical market into a mainstream multi billion dollar pillar of the storage market. ...read the article, Solid state disks, Market research A Tale of Two Tape Companies SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - January 25, 2005 - Qualstar Corporation today reported financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2005 ended December 31, 2004. Fiscal 2005 Second Quarter Financial Results Revenues for the second quarter of fiscal 2005 were $6.4 million down 33% from the same quarter of the prior year. Qualstar reported revenues of $12.7 million for the first six months of fiscal 2005 down 18% from the first six months of fiscal 2004. ...Qualstar profile, Disk to disk backup, Tape backup Editor's comments:- note that positioning statement "a manufacturer of automated tape storage solutions" at the start of this press release. I usually edit those out because they clutter the place up if you know the company, and they often add no value. But I left it in this time because it is pertinent to an understanding of the changing shifts in the backup market. Qualstar is one of the few remaining pure tape backup system companies. I think they're fighting a losing war - because eventually tape will disappear. They have a different view on this and have a report which you can download from their site called D2D Backup is NOT Enough - The Case for D2D2T. The problem with being a single product company (Qualstar has lots of products but they all include tape) is that your business is subject to the winds of change in that market sector. Qualstar was actually listed in our fastest growing storage companies in 2001 list - when it reported 39.6% year on year revenue growth. So the company, which was founded in 1984, has seen ups and downs in its long history. But the good times aren't coming back for tape. Qualstar needs to diversify its product line or spend more on advertising to take market share away from other tape backup makers. Instead - they reduced advertising and promotion spend in the most recent quarter as part of a general cost cutting exercise. That's just nuts IMHO. To contrast this - let's look at another tape backup old timer - StorageTek (founded in 1969 ). The company today reported revenue for the last quarter of $665.8 million up 1.6% from the year ago period. While this growth figure is an order of magnitude below many other parts of the storage market - it's a good figure for a company which made its name in tape backup but has embraced disk to disk backup and now offers a more balanced product line. BlueArc Names New Chief Technology Officer SAN JOSE, California - January 25, 2005 - BlueArc Corporation today announced the appointment of Shmuel Shottan as chief technology officer. In his new position, Shottan will work with CEO, Gianluca Rattazzi, to lead the company's technology and product direction. Shottan replaces Geoff Barrall, who is leaving BlueArc to focus on advisory roles and board positions in emerging and established technology companies, assisting with their product development, sales and marketing efforts. Shottan joined BlueArc in September 2001 as senior vice president of product development with responsibility for managing the company's engineering team. Shottan has more than 25 years' experience in the technology/storage industry, including more than a decade in senior vice president of engineering and CTO positions at leading hardware technology companies including Quantum, Meridian Data and Parallan Computer. At Meridian, he was responsible for introducing the Snap Server, the world's best-selling low-end NAS. ...BlueArc profile Finisar and Infineon Are Cuddly Again Editor:- January 25, 2005 - the on again / off again courtship saga involving Finisar and Infineon's fiber optic transceiver business has taken another twist. I watched the 1955 musical Guys and Dolls a few nights ago, in which Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) has been engaged to Miss Adelaide (Vivian Blaine) for 14 years. We learn he has deftly avoided tying the knot by timely detours to the race track or crap games when they were supposed to be on their way to be married. If I hear any more toings and froings about this optical business sale - a person could be getting a cold. Under the terms of the latest agreement, Finisar will issue 34 million shares for the assets associated with the design, development and manufacture of all optical transceiver products. The acquisition implies a valuation of nearly $50 million based on the closing price of January 21, 2005. Infineon will have an equity interest in Finisar of approximately 13%. The acquisition will involve the transfer of inventory, fixed assets and intellectual property associated with the design and manufacture of fiber optic transceivers including a broad range of 10 gigabit transceiver designs for XPAK, X2, XENPAK and XFP form factors. Infineon will retain ownership of its other businesses consisting of BIDI components for FTTH applications, parallel optical components and plastic optical fiber components that are used in automotive applications. ...Finisar profile, ...Infineon profile, GBICs, SFPs and XFPs DiskOnChip Design Win is a Sure Bet International Casino Exhibition, London - January 25, 2005 - M-Systems today announced that Austrian Gaming Industries (AGI) has selected DiskOnChip for embedded data storage in their new Novo Unity platform. Novo Unity is a centralized, network-based PC gaming administration platform. The DiskOnChip selected by AGI is a modular, plug-and-play flash-based storage device for the embedded market. It draws on the best of M-Systems' flash expertise and innovative technology to deliver high performance, uncompromising reliability and sophisticated security and encryption features. "The Novo Unity DiskOnChip solution gives our customers the reliability and security that they depend upon with a level of performance that supports even the most advanced features within our product line. Our extensive testing and evaluation process has shown that M-Systems is able to deliver a flash-based storage solution that is well suited to the special needs of the gaming industry," said AGI's Christian Schlinger, product development manager. AGI provides the broadest product range in the gaming industry including traditional reel-spinning Slot Machines, Video Slots, Video Pokers, Video Lottery Terminals, Limited Stakes Gaming Products, Multi-Player Machines and Installations as well as Electronic Live Gaming Equipment. ...M-Systems profile HP to Slash Thousands of UK VARs Editor:- January 25, 2005 - an article today in E-Commerce Times discusses HP's desire to get rid of thousands of VARs in the UK. My own view on this story, if true, is that as HP has considerably underperformed the growth in many leading segments of the storage market, most VARs would in fact be better off by dumping HP and selling instead sexier and more competitively priced products that users actually want and can afford. ...HP profile, Storage VARs in the UK SANRAD Delivers ver 2.2 iSCSI V-Switch SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - January 24, 2005 - SANRAD Inc today announced the release of Version 2.2 of StoragePro Software Services for its SANRAD iSCSI V-Switch product line. SANRAD's StoragePro is agent and license free and operates within the iSCSI V-Switch. It provides a comprehensive suite of intelligent storage services and management tools, including protocol conversion and data replication, that enable IT professionals to easily build and administer an all-in-one scalable iSCSI SAN. StoragePro gathers all FC, SCSI and iSCSI storage resources connected to the V-Switch into a single pool. From these pooled resources, administrators can define policies and services across all the storage devices, independent of the attached storage systems brand, type or protocol. Network administrators can define new logical volumes from the pooled storage resources. The logical storage volumes can take almost any shape and size, regardless of physical barriers such as RAID enclosures, physical disks, protocols and distance. ...SANRAD profile, SAN switches StorageTek Defines Roadmap for Undeletable Storage LOUISVILLE, Colo. - January 24, 2005 - Today StorageTek outlined its roadmap for the long-term protection of critical corporate records, including the introduction of Lifecycle Fixed Content Manager 100 to help companies address storage and archival for fixed content. With the addition of Lifecycle Fixed Content Manager 100, StorageTek customers have an array of choices to address compliance and fixed content management challenges that also includes StorageTek's inexpensive VolSafe WORM tape solution. "Current storage technologies are often insufficient to cope with the stringent government and federally-mandated compliance requirements," said StorageTek Chairman, CEO and President Patrick J. Martin. "Scaleable and cost-efficient archival is increasingly important to customers who are struggling to meet these requirements. We were one of the first to offer WORM-based, compliance solutions with StorageTek's VolSafe. Now we're offering our customers a scalable, open, disk-based data archival solution to help address their IT fixed content and regulatory compliance data management needs." Lifecycle Fixed Content Manager 100 is designed for the long-term storage and preservation of archive data. The platform provides companies with virtually tamper-proof, secure, reliable data storage that is easy to manage. Records can be protected from deletion until the expiration date established by the content application. Retention periods can be extended, but never shortened. ...StorageTek profile, Tape backup, Backup Software, Optical Storage Libraries, Disk to disk backup 4 of the Top 5 Server OEMs Choose LSI Logic for SAS MILPITAS, Calif. - January 24, 2005 - LSI Logic has secured Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) design wins at four of the world's top five server manufacturers as the industry prepares to launch first generation SAS enterprise platforms. The four server manufacturers will use LSI Logic SAS solutions, including controller ICs, Host Bus Adapters and MegaRAID storage adapter cards. SAS design wins with leading OEMs position the company well to successfully defend its storage market leadership. The company is now shipping production volumes of its 4- and 8-port SAS controller IC and the SASx12 expander. The wins underscore the significance of LSI Logic's technology leadership, ability to deliver first-to-market solutions, and storage company acquisition strategy. Details regarding specific server platforms remain confidential at this time and will be announced in cooperation with OEMs in future months and as server platforms come to market. Revenue from the SAS design wins is expected to exceed $450 million over the next three years. "This announcement shows that LSI Logic has been aggressive in helping top server OEM customers switch from current Ultra320 SCSI designs over to newer SAS solutions in 2005 and 2006," said Sean Lavey, a program manager from IDC. "We believe the transition to SAS hard disk drives will be an important trend to follow as adoption of this serial technology enables higher performance, improved reliability and increased scalability to both enterprise and SMB segments." SAS technology enables SCSI interface solutions beyond Ultra320 to the next-generation Direct Attach Storage enterprise server, storage systems, and high-performance workstation markets while retaining device-level backward compatibility. The SAS standard defines a device-level enterprise storage interface incorporating SCSI command sets, serial point-to-point interconnections, dual porting, increased addressability and the ability to scale to small form factors. Because the SAS physical layer is compatible with Serial ATA (SATA), users will have the choice of populating their systems with SAS or SATA hard disk drives, or a combination of both. ...LSI Logic profile, Serial Attached SCSI Ardis Technologies Launches 2U iSCSI Storage Het Vergun , The Netherlands - January 24, 2005 - Ardis Technologies today announced the availability of its new DynamicDrivePool storage server for professional video and audio with virtual drives using iSCSI over TCP/IP. DynamicDrivePool offers 2 Terrabyte, in a 2U 19 inch rackmount, Raid 5, system, on which the DDP software has been installed. Desktops can create drives with variable size and use, release and exchange or share them. The DDP is delivered including CD's for the various desktop operating systems (Windows XP, Windows 2000, Mac OS 10.x, Linux). The DDP can also be used in environments with a mixture of PCs and Macs. Installation and operation is very straightforward and investment costs are low with a retail price of 11.995 Euro excluding tax. ...ArdisTech profile Hitachi virtualises EMC storage systems Bucks, UK - January 24, 2005 - Hitachi Data Systems today announced the immediate availability of Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform virtualisation support for EMC Symmetrix DMX 800, 1000, 2000, 3000 and Symmetrix 3000, 5000 and 8000 series storage systems. EMC CLARiiON CX series storage systems will be supported at the end of January. EMC customers can now take advantage of the Universal Storage Platform, which extends the useful life of their installed storage assets, reduces operational costs and software licensing fees, and provides superior software functionality, such as asynchronous remote copy and logical partitioning, a feature unavailable on any EMC products. "Customers can now revitalise their existing EMC storage systems with the latest advanced Hitachi software by leveraging the virtualisation layer within the Universal Storage Platform, which essentially 'maps' new functionality to all externally attached storage systems," said Yoshinori Okami, General Manager of Storage Systems Development, Hitachi, Ltd. "This means you can take a CLARiiON, virtualise it, and enable it to store mainframe data on SATA disks; you can take a DMX attach it to a Universal Storage Platform and virtualise it as part of a logical partition, assigning dedicated resources to an individual application; you can move data from CLARiiONs to Symmetrixes and back, enabling true ILM - the possibilities are revolutionary, and Hitachi is bringing it to EMC customers first." "Our virtualisation solution, the first controller-based implementation in the industry, doesn't rely on API bartering between storage or switch vendors, or require any appliances or routers in the data path," said Hu Yoshida, Chief Technology Officer, Hitachi Data Systems. "Indeed, Hitachi simply extended the internal virtualisation capabilities it has developed over the last twelve years to external storage, especially leveraging the virtual storage ports concept." ...Hitachi Data Systems profile, SAN software Onaro's SANscreen is IBM TotalStorage Proven Boston - January 24, 2005 - Onaro, Inc. today announced that SANscreen has successfully completed interoperability testing with the IBM TotalStorage ESS Model 800 under the IBM TotalStorage Proven program. As part of the program, SANscreen underwent testing at the Waltham, Mass. IBM Innovation Center for Business Partners. The process included tests for interoperability and functionality. "Companies are seeking highly available SANs that they can change and scale dynamically with confidence," said Tom Riddle, vice president, business development, Onaro. "The predictive change management capabilities of Onaro's SANscreen combined with IBM TotalStorage give customers a compelling solution for a highly available, scaleable on-demand SAN infrastructure." 80% of problems in SANs result directly from SAN changes, according to industry estimates. Agent-less and non-invasive, SANscreen applies predictive simulation, troubleshooting, deterministic root-cause analysis and continuous monitoring and validation in order to reduce the risk, resources and time in managing, changing and scaling storage networks. SANscreen attains SAN assurance by delivering the stable infrastructure that empowers all other storage management investments, including SRM and provisioning products. ...Onaro profile | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| storage history (1949 till last week) | STORAGEsearch | SPARC Product Directory | ACSL - the publisher |
