| Storage Services news |
Expect 16GFC by 2011 - says
FCIA
Editor:- October 20, 2009 - the Fibre Channel Industry
Association announced its has completed the technical work on
16Gb/s
Fibre Channel (16GFC) - which provides a natural value migration from 8GFC.
Product
roll-outs are anticipated in 2011 according to FCIA Chairman - Skip Jones.
Editor's
comments:- I first published a directory of Fibre-channel adapters way back
in 1994. The first FC connected storage array product listed in that
was the
SPARCstorageArray
from
Sun Microsystems.
It's reassuring that users in the FC market can anticipate another
level of performance evolution - but FC is no longer a growth market. So this
could be the last post for FC - just as
15K RPM
was the end of the road for hard disks.
For dispersed systems
ethernet based storage (NAS)
long ago became the dominant network storage connect - while for local use and
higher performance InfiniBand
and PCIe have taken
hold in distinct functional pockets.
EMC Acquires Kazeon
Editor:- September 1, 2009 -
EMC today
announced it has
signed a definitive agreement to
acquire privately-held
Kazeon Systems.
Core to Kazeon's
eDiscovery
attractiveness is its ability to handle data that resides anywhere in the
enterprise environment - including content on laptops, desktops, content
management repositories, email archives and file shares.
Vembu Aims at US Online Backup Market
Editor:- May
28, 2009 - Vembu
Technologies today announced the appointment of Randy J. Whitehead
as VP of Strategic Business Development.
Reporting to Vembu's
President,
Lakshmanan Narayan, Randy will
primarily be responsible for growing Vembu's business in the US and Canada,
with a focus on channel partnerships.
"Our StoreGrid software
solution powers the
online backup services
business of more than 1,250 service providers worldwide, and more than 850 of
these service providers are based in North America," said Sekar Vembu, CEO
of Vembu Technologies. "Randy's deep experience in operations and sales,
coupled with his years of experience in the online backup market, will help to
further catalyze our rapid growth in the service provider market."
Prior to Vembu, Randy was co-founder and COO of
Arsenal Digital Solutions.
Randy has more than 20 years experience in outsourcing solutions and operations,
system integration and business development. He was also at
StorageTek, where he
was responsible for the industry's first implementation of a storage utility
solution and the structuring of large outsourcing/utility deals, as well as the
operation and delivery of managed storage services. He has also held senior
positions with IBM, BT, Data General and AT&T. Storage People
AFN Manages Video Content with Front Porch Digital
LOUISVILLE, Colo. - March
2, 2009 - Front Porch Digital today announced that the American
Forces Network broadcast center has implemented the company's systems to
support management, retrieval, and long-term preservation of video content.
From its Riverside, Calif., facility,
AFN provides radio and television
programming to approximately 900,000 U.S. service men and women, Department of
Defense civilians, and families stationed outside the United States. By means of
12 full-time television channels, AFN offers entertainment and information to
personnel located in 177 countries and on Navy ships at sea.
"AFN's
mandate is to provide 'a taste of home' to U.S. personnel and dependents the
world over," said Mike Knaisch, president of Front Porch Digital. "Front
Porch Digital's content storage management solutions constitute a flexible,
scalable, and cost-effective way to manage video programming content in support
of that important mission."
...Front Porch Digital
profile, Storage
Services, Military &
Rugged Storage
SalvationDATA Offers Better Hope of Data Recovery for flash SSDs
Sichuan,
China - February 6, 2009 - SalvationDATA announced it has developed a
new new technology for flash SSD data recovery.
The company says
its methodology will work with all commercial devices (excluding military and
industrial SSDs which have inbuilt secure erase). The new tools are expected to
launch in May 2009 - and will be priced at about $1,300.
...SalvationDATA
profile
Editor's comments:- I didn't think this would be
feasible - and even wrote an
article explaining
why it would be very difficult.
It is difficult! - and does need a
new approach. But this is one prediction about which I'll be glad to be proved
wrong. Lack of an affordable flash SSD data recovery industry could have
triggered a backfire, damping enthusiasm in the consumer SSD revolution - and
such a setback could have been a reactionary market differentiator favoring
notebook HDDs. (Most consumers and SMBs don't do effective
backups - a trend which
hasn't changed in all the many years I've reported market research on this
subject.)
Article Suggests - You Wash Backup Cares Right Out of Your Hair
Editor:- January 13, 2009 - AjaxWorld
magazine has published an article called - "Taking Backup and Recovery
Management off IT's To-Do List."
Author Bill Watson argues that outsourcing the responsibility for
recovering data is a better idea for many organizations than doing it in-house.
Coincidentally this is just the kind of service his company (Symantec
Managed Backup Services) sells.
See also the classic (2001)
article:-
Developing a Disaster
Recovery Procedure - by BakBone
Software which concluded "A Disaster Recovery Plan usually cannot be
written by the IT Deparment alone and should not be created for a given computer
or data center. Typically, effective Disaster Recovery plans are a long-term
project... "
A contra argument I suggest is that
backup and
data recovery are too
important to entrust to a single external service provider. In the interests
of data survivability you need diverse providers of this service (internal as
well as external) just as you need diverse backup locations and media types.
Where did my headline come from? - Listen to the song on
I'm gonna wash that man
right out of my hair
US National Archives Selects Front Porch Digitization
LOUISVILLE, Colo. - December
15, 2008 - Front Porch Digital announced that the U.S. National
Archives and Records Administration has selected its SAMMA Robot to digitize
thousands of hours of videotape records accumulated by the federal government.
The pilot project will rely on a
SAMMA 4-stream U-Matic
Robot to migrate the records to digital files, thus preserving them and
facilitating future access to them.
"This is the initial phase of what we anticipate will be a huge
project - bringing the video collection of the National Archives into the 21st
century," said Mark Gray, executive V.P. and general manager of Front Porch
Digital Americas. "...As it grows and expands over time, this project will
become an outstanding example of how our SAMMA solutions can migrate the world's
largest videotape archives."
The NARA audio/video preservation
laboratory stores videotape made by almost every agency of the federal
government. Front Porch Digital is also engaged in migrating the audio/visual
archive at the U.S. Library of Congress.
...Front Porch Digital
profile
Brocade Enhances SAN Monitoring
SAN
JOSE, Calif. - December 2, 2008 - Brocade announced today
enhancements to its Network Monitoring Service.
Brocade
NMS now provides 24×7 expert
end-to-end monitoring about the health and status of data center fabrics to help
maximize network efficiency, availability, and uptime. Moreover, Brocade NMS
provides organizations with valuable information and rules-based business
intelligence to maximize application availability and optimize data center
resources. ...Brocade
profile, storage
reliability
Sun Enters the Disk Sanitizer Market
Santa
Clara, Calif - November 25, 2008 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. today
entered the Disk Sanitizer market.
Sun Data Protection
Services, Data Erasure, is a new on-site service to help enable customers to
remain compliant with internal corporate data erasure policies during the
removal, redeployment or relocation of equipment containing sensitive data. The
service also empowers customers' to become compliant with the ever increasing
policies of regulatory agencies for the removal or destruction of data, by
providing a global, audit-ready solution that erases data at the platter level.
Sun has been using the same data erasure service internally to prepare company
assets for reassignment and redeployment.
Industry research (from
IDC) indicates that most
midsize to large corporations replace about 25% to 33% of
their IT equipment on an annual basis. Each event in the equipment life cycle
can expose sensitive corporate or customer data to possible breach or
compromise. ...Sun
Microsystems profile, Storage
Services , Disk
Sanitizers
New Service Takes Pain Out of Archiving Camcorder Hard Drives
Duluth,
GA - November 3, 2008 - The Photo Archival Company has launched a new
service to help users archive video trapped inside today's generation of no-tape
camcorders that record to internal hard drive or flash memory.
The Photo Archival Company is able to preserve video footage
directly from the customer's tapeless camcorder,
external USB hard drive or
flash memory to produce long-lasting
DVDs or Blu-ray Discs.
This solves the practical problem faced by users of high capacity camcorders
that when the disk is full - they may be facing 40 to 120 hours of elapsed time
to get the data off the camera and archived onto optical media.
"The
recurring theme from a typical customer is that it is impractical for them to
archive their digital footage first hand," said Charles Laughlin, President
and founder of The Photo Archival Company. "For the average household, it
can be a daunting task to spend the necessary time to tend to the successful
creation of several DVDs or Blu-ray Discs just to continue filming."
...Photo
Archival Company, Storage
Services
Editor's comments:- an alternative solution - if you don't want
to waste days uploading data and burning DVDs yourself - is to train the
starlets of your home movies to do this for you. Of course it works better if
they are children - rather than dogs. (Unless
Cesar
has already done this in an episode I missed.)
Seagate Services Renamed i365
Editor:- September 23, 2008 -
Seagate today announced a comprehensive rebranding of its EVault,
MetaLINCS, and Seagate Recovery Services companies into a single new brand -
i365
i365, a Seagate Company, focuses on the unique needs
and expectations of small, mid-size and enterprise companies. The "i"
in the name represents information and "365" for commitment to be
reliably available and accessible to customers.
renamed storage companies,
Data Recovery
AmeriVault Offers Off-Site Restart & Data Recovery for
iSeries Servers
Waltham
MA - August 26, 2008 - AmeriVault today announced the availability of
an advanced, hardware-free, hosted disaster recovery service for iSeries servers
(also known as AS400 or System i) that allows remote access to a virtualized
recovery environment following a disaster.
The foundation of
RestartIT-VDR for iSeries consists of
online backup and
virtualized standby recovery servers hosted at one of AmeriVault's secure,
world-class datacenters.
Should a client encounter an outage or suffer a disaster, rapid
recovery commences: the backup data is recovered to AmeriVault's standby
iSeries server – all achieved remotely for the client. With iSeries'
compression and with GbE connectivity in AmeriVault's datacenters, the recovery
process to AmeriVault's recovery servers can take just a few hours. End users
can then VPN-in to resume operations while the primary systems are rebuilt.
Full recovery is typically achieved in 10 hours or less.
RestartIT-VDR for iSeries allows clients to remotely access
AmeriVault's virtualized iSeries environment for up to 30 days following
the declaration of a disaster – for no additional charge – providing
plenty of time for a company to rebuild its primary systems following a
disaster.
...AmeriVault
profile
Editor's comments:- sounds like a realistically designed service.
In fact many online backup companies offer engineering assisted data recovery as
part of their high end services. For example
CRC Data Protection
has an
enterprise
package which includes shipping media for a bare metal restore - if the
amount of data would take too long to recover online. | |
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Nibble:-
How Big is the Storage Services Market?
With more than a $24
billion market in 2005 and more than 1,000 storage services providers vying for
storage services revenue worldwide,
Gartner (in 2006)
predicted the storage services market will surpass $30 billion by 2009.
Reality
check:- In 2002 Gartner predicted that this market would be worth around $45
billion in 2005. Their predictions are sometimes way too optimistic. | |
| . |
Squeak!
- Animal Brands and Metaphors in the Storage Market
Animal
marketing metaphors are popular in service industries, but you'd be surprised
how many companies have used animals in their marketing of data storage
products and services.
As the storage market gets bigger - more
companies will turn to animal brands to help differentiate their otherwise bland
products and lend them artificial (or deserving) characters and virtues.
The idea behind this type of marketing is to suggest positive connotations so
it's unlikely that anyone will choose to associate their products with gremlins.
But you may be surprised by the population of the storage ark.
This
reference articles lists all known companies who have furry marketing brands,
and also includes some which are slimy, scaly and scary too. ...read the article,
Mice in storage | |
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Advertising
on
STORAGEsearch |
| When
Cheaperbyte's sales manager said "Accelerate your storage sales",
he knew just the right way to do it. | |
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