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2006, February week 1, news archive

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Squeak! - Venture funds in storage
Squeak! - the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide
Squeak! - the Fastest Growing Storage Companies
Squeak! - the 10 biggest storage companies in 2008?
Squeak! - the Top 10 Storage Software Companies
article:- Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win?
article:- Sanitization Methods for Cleaning Up Hard Disk Drives
Squeak! - Why are Most Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks?
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Sunnyvale, Calif. - February 7, 2006 - Network Appliance, Inc. today announced new disk-to-disk backup and security solutions. New products include:- the single-head NearStore VTL600 and the dual-head NearStore VTL1200. NearStore VTL is a dedicated, enterprise-class storage appliance that emulates physical tape libraries, stores large capacities of backup data on disk, and automatically copies data to physical tape under backup application control within any open systems storage environment. NearStore VTL systems scale from 4.5TB to 168TB; integrate seamlessly with backup software from industry leaders BakBone, CA, CommVault, HP, Legato, Symantec, Syncsort, and Tivoli; and work with tape libraries from ADIC, IBM, Quantum, StorageTek, and others.

In related data protection news, Decru, a NetApp company, today announced Decru DataFort E-Series Version 3.0 firmware for IP-based storage environments. The new firmware further extends the Decru unified storage security platform by incorporating CIFS, NFS, and now iSCSI onto a single appliance. ...Network Appliance profile, Disk to disk backup, article:- Virtual Tape: Can You Afford to Ignore It?


PALO ALTO, Calif - February 7, 2006 - HP has signed a definitive agreement to acquire OuterBay. With OuterBay's technology, HP can help organizations to more effectively manage database growth and improve database performance by up to 80% - a critical capability in today's business environment where database information is in constant use. The technology additionally will enable HP to expand its solutions for customers deploying Oracle, SQLServer, and Sybase databases as well as major enterprise applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite, SAP and PeopleSoft. ...HP profile, ...OuterBay profile, 346 acquired & gone away storage companies


HERZLIYA, Israel - February 7, 2006 - Exanet today announced the results of the latest benchmark of its fully-scalable ExaStore data center storage system. In the industry-standard benchmark, run according to guidelines set by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, the ExaStore system set an industry record of 143,880 SPECsfs operations per second for a two-node cluster, with an overall response time of 1.47ms. This is the highest performance achieved by any NAS vendor.

Exanet also released its "dollars per operations per seconds" figures, based on the benchmark results and Exanet's list price for the benchmark configuration. According to this calculation, the ExaStore system, in its two-node high-performance cluster configuration, achieved $2.35 per SPECsfs ops. Based on its scaling achievements in earlier benchmarks, Exanet expects its four-node and six-node high-performance configurations to scale linearly to approximately double and triple the two- node performance, respectively.

Clive Surfleet, Chief Strategy Officer at Exanet, said, "The 'dollars per operations per seconds' metrics is related to data access speed, and to the number of users who can be supported by a storage system of a given size. This information is of tremendous help to users seeking the most suitable storage offering for their organization, and is often difficult to obtain. Exanet is the first company to publicly announce its price performance results." ...Exanet profile, Record Breaking Storage


Munich, Germany - February 7, 2006 - Infineon Technologies announced today that Rainer Westermann, Corporate Vice President Communications, will be leaving the company. Westermann has been responsible for the entire corporate communications at Infineon including PR, Marketing Communications, Government Relations and Internal Communications. Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart, CEO and President of Infineon Technologies, will take over his duties temporarily. ...Infineon profile, Storage People, article:- Here Today, Gone Tomorrow... the Problem with Storage Marketers

Editor's comments:- Westermann became marcoms chief at Infineon in October 2004



Fremont, Calif. - February 7, 2006 - 3t Systems announces its partnership with BiTMICRO Networks, Inc. "We recognize the benefits of deploying BiTMICRO's E-Disk solid state hard drives to speed up demanding enterprise applications," says Dan Ganousis, VP of Sales and Marketing for 3t Systems. Since its establishment in 1994, 3t has grown to become the largest private employer of IT consultants in the Rocky Mountain region. Clients include Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, E*TRADE, Great West Life Insurance, Commercial Federal Bank and the Colorado State University. ...3t Systems, ...BiTMICRO profile, solid state disks


LAKE FOREST, Calif. - February 6, 2006 - Western Digital Corp today announced that its WD Passport Portable USB Drives are now available with 120GB capacity. WD Passport Drives were recently named one of the "Ten Coolest Products" by USA Today Now: Personal Technology magazine. With no need for a separate power supply (for most systems) these drives are outfitted with 5,400 RPM quiet-running WD Scorpio 2.5 inch EIDE hard drives. Estimated pricing for the 120GB model is $199. ...Western Digital profile, USB storage, Hard disk drives


Nampa, Idaho - February 6, 2006 - MPC Computers today announced the DataFRAME 440 SAN. The DataFRAME 440's 3U form factor supports 16 hot-swappable 250GB or 500GB SATA II hard drives, with up to 8TB of storage per enclosure. The new product offers greater RAID performance and flexibility than earlier models from the company including support for hot-spare hard drives. The DataFRAME 440 also features hot-swappable hard drives, hot-swappable power supplies, and redundant cooling for maximum uptime and reliability. Additionally, users have the choice between (upto 6) iSCSI or dual Fibre Channel network connections. LeftHand Networks' SAN/iQ management software is integrated in the DataFRAME so that as physical disk space is used up, it will alert the IT administrator to add additional capacity, which can be done seamlessly without server down time. ...MPC Computers profile, Rackmount Storage


February 6, 2006 - Leading technology companies, including IBM, Neterion Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Universal Network Machines today announced that they have joined forces in the OpenRDMA project to support the open source software for Remote Direct Memory Access over TCP/IP and Ethernet networks. Promoting a transport-independent RDMA solution, OpenRDMA software will support network fabrics other than Ethernet. RDMA technology enables high-performance server clustering and eliminates the burden of excessive memory copies when communicating between servers. ...Neterion profile


SAN JOSE, CA - February 6, 2006 - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced that LG Electronics will use Hitachi Deskstar hard drives in its new RH7800 series of DVD-HDD Recorders. The RH7800 series use 160 GB hard drives for storing up to 220 hours of digital video content, including television programs, movies, music and photos. Hitachi Deskstar drives were chosen for their substantial capacities, ability to handle multiple video streams simultaneously, quiet acoustics, low power requirements and overall reliability.

LG relied on Hitachi's "Smooth Stream" technology to enhance the video streaming functionality in its new DVD-HDD Recorders. Based on the ATA-7 AV Streaming Feature Set standard, Smooth Stream enables the RH7800 to control the drive's error recovery process, optimizing the drive to capture multiple video streams simultaneously. Hitachi was the first hard drive vendor to integrate ATA-7 technology capability into its product line. ...Hitachi profile, DVD drives


ANDOVER, MA - February 6, 2006 - Availl Inc. announced it has shipped a new version of its software for consolidated backup across wide area networks. The new release scales to thousands of users and hundreds of sites across multiple continents. It also consolidates real-time server backup for both hot databases and unlimited files into one unified architecture, for any moment-in-time retrieval capability.

"When I spoke to colleagues at other large engineering firms about how they supported remote offices, I didn't like what I was told," said Eddie Greene, IT manager of Alliance Engineering, an engineering firm with offices in both Virginia and Maryland. "These were major companies, and they were relying on one-way updates to or from remote sites between 2 am and 4 am. I knew that we could never work that way. We have more than 160,000 files requiring approximately 60GB of disc space, with many users creating files and accessing, modifying and referencing the existing set of files across sites. Availl was the only vendor I found whose solution gave local access times, even on large AutoCad files, with real-time file locking. We avoid those PDM system nightmares I heard about from colleagues, and our users work at local network speeds at all offices without conflicts that occur when other colleagues are accessing the same file."

Availl's technology sends only byte level differences as the files change, then compresses and encrypts them. Availl guarantees real-time file version coherence so that that users always open the latest version, even if it is being modified at another site. Availl WAFS for CAD and other file access is priced starting at $3,995 for the first two servers. Availl Continuous Data Protection is priced from $995 per server. ...Availl profile


Sunnyvale and San Francisco, CA - February 6, 2006 - Chelsio Communications, Inc. and Nimbus Data Systems, Inc. today announced a partnership to incorporate Chelsio acceleration technology in an upcoming line of iSCSI storage systems from Nimbus. The new iSCSI storage systems (which will be available in the first half of 2006) are expected to deliver the industry's highest performance IP SANs. ...Chelsio profile, ...Nimbus profile

Editor's comments:- Chelsio offers a 10GbE iSCSI accelerator, but another architectural contender in the iSCSI performance race is iSCSI over InfiniBand. There's no doubt it will be a competitive market. In September 2005 - iVivity announced a 400,000 IOPS record breaking iSCSI benchmark on 10GbE achieved by their storage network processor.



Geneva - February 6, 2006 - STMicroelectronics today unveiled details of an advanced 4 Gigabit NAND Flash memory that achieves a world record throughput of 36MB/s, some 50% greater than the best results achieved to date. The device, which is to be described at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in a paper authored by researchers from STMicroelectronics and Hynix Semiconductor, incorporates a powerful embedded error-correction processor that can detect and correct up to five errors per page to ensure high reliability and fast data throughput while simplifying the design of the memory system.

Current practice with NAND Flash memories is to implement the error correction as an algorithm executed by the system processor. However this typically results in a throughput penalty that is typically several megabytes/s. The ST device employs a radically different approach in which a sophisticated ECC processor is embedded within the Flash memory.

The dedicated processor implements the error correction technique called BCH (Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem) that is widely used in WLAN applications where multiple data transmission errors need to be reliably detected and corrected. The embedded ECC processor is based on an innovative architecture that optimizes the ECC computations for byte-oriented, serial readout memory applications such as MP3 players and USB keys, minimizing silicon area, latency and power consumption. As a result, the ST device achieves a read throughput rate of 36MB/s, significantly greater than the best previously reported rate of 23MB/s before error correction. ...STMicroelectronics profile, Storage Events


Editor: - February 6, 2006 - STORAGEsearch reports on readers' changing interests in January. In January 2006, readership grew 53% compared to the year ago period. The top 3 subjects viewed by readers (out of 70 storage categories on our home page) were:-
  1. Hard drives
  2. Solid state disks
  3. NAS
Commenting on the results:- Zsolt Kerekes, publisher, said "Storage has become a fast changing market where it seems that the roles for different technologies, once cast in stone, are now dissolving. Navigating through the rubble of fallen storage empires our mission is to lead our readers safely to the new storage frontier. I'm delighted that the high growth in our readership in the past year confirms that so many users and vendors have confidence in what we're doing." For more information on the top subjects, most popular articles etc see Market research


MILPITAS, CA - February 6, 2006 - LSI Logic Corp today announced that storage systems from its Engenio Storage Group are now certified Solaris Ready within the Sun Cluster Open Storage Program. By meeting these requirements, customers can be assured that Engenio storage products are fully interoperable with the Solaris 10 OS. This certification allows customers to design a storage infrastructure utilizing Sun Cluster software and Sun Fire Servers that takes advantage of the high availability of Engenio storage systems for mission critical applications. ...Engenio profile, Sun, SPARC, Solaris news


SAN JOSE, CA - February 3, 2006 - Addonics Technologies today announced a Toshiba 1.8-inch to 2.5-inch IDE connector, which allows users to connect the drive to any computer including the hard drive found on the Apple iPOD. The new Toshiba 1.8" to 2.5" IDE connector allows users to attach this small 1.8" hard drive just like a 2.5" hard drive. It can also be connected to the standard 40 pin IDE cable common found on any desktop computer, server, and most industrial PCs by adding the Addonics 2.5" to 3.5" converter kit. You now can easily read or write onto this tiny hard drive using almost any system. With the new Addonics converter any Toshiba 1.8-inch hard drive can also become a read only drive by using the standard IDE Write blocker, which makes it an appropriate solution for forensics applications.

The write-blocking feature prevents accidental and intentional destruction of data and preserves evidence for computer crime/security investigations. The Addonics 1.8-inch to 2.5-inch IDE connector also allows iPOD owners to connect the hard drive inside their iPOD as a regular 2.5" hard drive to other computers. With the connector, an iPOD user who has defective iPOD can export data off the drive. The connector can be combined with the Addonics Pocket ExDrive enclosure, which allows the Toshiba 1.8-inch drive to be used an external hard drive or as a removable hard drive. Users can connect the enclosure to USB, Firewire, SATA or CardBus/PCMCIA by attaching an Addonics USIB interface cable. ...Addonics profile, Removable disks, Hard disk drives


SAN JOSE, Calif. - February 2, 2006 - Samsung Electronics Ltd. introduces four new 2.5-inch hard disk drives specifically designed for intensive notebook and enterprise computing applications. Samsung's latest addition to its SpinPoint family of hard drives includes the M60 SATA Series featuring the 100GB HM100JI ($170 Estimated Street Price) and 120GB HM120JI ($200) and the M60 Series featuring 100GB HM100JC ($150) and 120GB HM120JC ($180). The new drives operate at 5,400rpm spindle speed and provide cutting-edge shock protection capability through an advanced mechanical platform and able-bodied cover design engineered to minimize the intensity of external shock transmitted to the most critical components of the drive. Samsung claims that the new M60 drives provide notebook users with some of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives in the industry. ...Samsung profile


SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. - February 2, 2006 - Coraid Inc. and Rocket Division Software Inc. today announced the release of Windows support for the open ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) disk storage protocol. Coraid claims that AoE delivers a simple, high-performance, low-cost alternative to iSCSI for networked block storage by eliminating the processing overhead of TCP/IP.

The new AoE Windows driver works with 32/64 bit Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 systems, and provides a simple user interface to mount disks on the network. RDS has added the AoE Windows Driver to its well-recognized iSCSI software products. AoE gives Windows users the ability to directly access disks on the network as if they were locally attached - providing the benefits of storage area networking at a fraction of the cost of a typical Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN.

"We are able to offer excellent performance without a heavy processing load on the Windows client system. This is a big advantage for any network storage protocol," stated Anton Kolomyeytsev, CEO of Rocket Division Software. The Windows driver is now available for download. ...Coraid profile, ...Rocket Division Software profile


ISLANDIA, N.Y. - February 1, 2006 - CA (formerly called Computer Associates) today announced it has legally changed its corporate name to "CA, Inc.", effective today. The ticker symbol for the Company's common stock will remain the same. The name change aligns the Company's corporate name with its refined positioning and brand promise to unify and simplify the management of enterprise-wide IT. ...CA profile, renamed storage companies

Editor's comments:- It's fashionable for big companies to have small names:- for example IBM, HP, Dell, GM. To extrapolate this trend the world's biggest 26 companies should aspire to have recognizable names which consist of single letters - "A", "B", "C". Laggardly companies will have to make do with letters from other alphabets - such as "Þ". Numbers will be in hot demand - and there will be legal battles over the ownership of the desirable "1". ... No doubt that will keep many of the world's most highly paid marketing managers busy for years.



SANTA CLARA, CA and OAKDALE, MN - February 1, 2006 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Imation Corp today announced a strategic agreement related to current and future storage products. Sun and Imation will work toward the development and launch of an extension to the existing Sun StorageTek T9840 drive platform. Imation becomes an approved supplier to Sun StorageTek for branded LTO-2 and LTO-3 tape cartridges. Sun and Imation will investigate alternative recording media technologies, including Imation's Ulysses technology (which packages a SATA 2.5-inch disk drive in an LTO Ultrium cartridge form factor) for potential future integration into Sun's automated tape library product line. ...Imation profile, ...Sun profile


Powell River, Canada - February 1, 2006 - Tugboat Enterprises Ltd has launched its latest product Nauticus to protect laptop owners in case of theft of laptop computers and notebooks. Nauticus is an affordable automated on-line, off-site back up system that stores user data in secure facilities with built-in redundancy. The monthly price is $9.95 for the first 500MB and 1 cent per megabyte thereafter. A free 15 day trial version (50M) is available for users to test the service. The privacy laws of Canada provide excellent protection of corporate documents in this off-site storage system.

"While it's true that our off-site data storage product Nauticus can and is sold to desktop and network users," said Tugboat CEO Judi Tyabji Wilson, "we have discovered through the sale of our successful data rescue program Lifeboat that laptops users are the most vulnerable to loss of data. These are the two groups with the most to lose when data is stolen, or lost due to software malfunction. It is unfortunate that so many CEOs and government department heads don't insist that proper off-site backup is done and data recovery software is available. Some take the attitude that it won't happen to me, and when it does they have little or no recourse."

Nauticus requires an internet connection and supports the Windows family of operating systems including Windows 95/98/ME, Windows 2000/XPWindows, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 (Server and workstation), and Windows 2003. ...Tugboat profile, data recovery, online backup

Other news on this page

NetApp Expands Disk to Disk Product Line

HP Acquires Another Storage Software Company

Exanet Sets NAS Benchmark Record

Infineon's MarComs Chief Departs

Solid State Disks in the Rocky Mountains

WD Passport USB Drives Grow to 120G

DataFRAME 440 iSCSI SAN includes Hot Spare HDDs

Industry Collaborates on Remote Direct Memory Access

Hitachi Hard Drives Used in LG DVD Recorder

Availl Accelerates Shared WAN File Performance

Nimbus and Chelsio Aim for Fastest iSCSI Storage

On Chip Error Correction Speeds Up Flash

STORAGEsearch.com's Readership Grew 53%

Engenio Achieves Solaris Ready Certification

Addonics Converter Can Rescue Data off Dead iPOD

Samsung Launches New Notebook Drives

Is AoE Protocol an Alternative to iSCSI?

Computer Associates changes name to CA

Imation Supplies LTO to Sun

Tugboat Enters Online Notebook Backup Market

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M-Systems
M-Systems is a leader and innovator of
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Squeak! - the Top 10 Fastest Growing Storage Companies
read the article - the Fastest Growing storage companies in 2005
This is the 5th annual edition of this popular article, and is compiled from analyzing the reported results from the top 1,000 storage companies in 2005.

The top 3 companies had over 70% year on year revenue growth. If you're looking to team with successful storage companies or want to emulate their success, this article will tell you who they are and the market segments they are in. ...read the article
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Squeak! - Why are Most Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks?
read the article - Why are Most Analysts  Wrong About Solid State Disks?
Most analysts and editors of other computer publications don't really understand the solid state disk market. They show their ignorance and naivete by prefacing every discussion of SSDs with a superficial analysis which compares the cost per byte of storage between flash and hard disk drives. That's the wrong answer to the wrong question. And it's far removed from why the SSD market is racing to become a multi billion dollar market seemingly in blithe ignorance of the cost per byte proposition.

This article tells you what's important to users and the main applications in which SSDs are already being used and new applications where they will be used in the next 3 years. ...read the article, Solid State Disks
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FrankeNAS - click for more info
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disk to disk (removable) backup with
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Squeak! - the Top 10 Storage Software Companies - 2005
.read the article - top 10 software companies
This is the 5th annual edition of this popular report (published January 18, 2006). The ranking - based on analyzing millions of pageviews from over 640,000 STORAGEsearch.com readers during 2005 - shows what readers are actually interested in. ...read the article, backup software, Storage Software
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article:-  Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - by Semico Research
Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - article by Semico Research

There's a confusing picture in many consumer products like phones, cameras and music players in which one day it seems that the storage function is done by flash and next day another company announces they're doing the same thing with miniature hard disks.

Is there any sense to this seemingly random choice?

This article uses pricing trends, technology trends and unique market analysis insights to show that users and oems may be able to reliably predict which storage devices will be most cost effective depending where you are on the future history curve. ...read the article, Hard disk drives, Flash Memory, Market research, Solid state disks
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click to see profile for Napier
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that offers a true pan-European approach.

editor proven - PR Agencies
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read the article by ICS - Sanitization Methods
Sanitization Methods for Cleaning Up Hard Disk Drives - article by Intelligent Computer Solutions

Removing the data on old unwanted disk drives has become a concern for all users.

In 2005 Pointsec found that they were able to read 7 out of 10 hard-drives bought over the Internet at auctions such as eBay, for less than the cost of a McDonald's meal, all of which had "supposedly" been "wiped-clean" or "re-formatted".

This article reviews the various methods available to sanitize hard disks along with the advantages and disadvantages in each case....read the article, ...Intelligent Computer Solutions profile, disk sanitizers
.
Déjà viewing storage history
.
6 years ago this month.... (February 2000) - Sun boldly proclaimed its growth strategy for the fast growing storage market.

PALO ALTO, CA, - February 9, 2000 - Sun Microsystems today announced plans to dramatically increase its sales and marketing activities to attack the exploding storage market.

As part of its expanded focus on network storage, Sun has created a new storage sales Line of Business, promoted two executives to positions of increased responsibility, and outlined initial details of a comprehensive network storage strategy.

"We are living in a world where digital information is the lifeblood of commerce and community," said Ed Zander, president of Sun Microsystems. "As every person and digital device connects to the Internet, it will create enormous demand for our storage products and services. As a premiere platform provider for the Internet economy, we continue to invest heavily in our storage business. We've assembled the necessary people, products and technology to capture an increased share of this fast growing network storage market."

...Later:- as early as September 2000 - it was clear to me that Sun's storage strategy would fail - as predicted in this article from that time published in STORAGEsearch.com - Squeak! -Will Sun Succeed in the STORAGE market?.

It would be another 5 painful years before Sun changed its storage strategy to one which might succeed with its acquisition in 2005 of StorageTek.
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the Top 20 Most Popular Storage Search Categories

T
he top 20 most popular storage categories on STORAGEsearch.com in January 2006 were as follows... Figures in brackets (n) indicate rank the month before.
  1. Hard drives (2)
  2. Solid state disks (1)
  3. NAS (3)
  4. USB storage (4)
  5. Flash memory (5)
  6. Backup software (6)
  7. SAN (9)
  8. Serial ATA (SATA) (7)
  9. Disk to disk backup (11)
  10. Market research & analysts (8)
  11. RAID systems (10)
  12. Serial Attached SCSI (14)
  13. Data recovery (17)
  14. Removable Storage (new entry to top 20)
  15. iSCSI (12)
  16. RAM (15)
  17. Online backup & storage (13)
  18. Storage Software (19)
  19. Boxes & enclosures (18)
  20. Tape Libraries (20)
.

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