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  • Vembu Launches Online Backup on Amazon Web Services


    Vembu Technologies has made available for production StoreGrid Cloud AMI, an online backup "virtual appliance" on Amazon Web Services.

    The company says that with the StoreGrid Cloud AMI and the Amazon Web Services infrastructure, it is now possible for service providers to offer a scalable, secure and highly redundant online backup service to their small and medium business (SMB) customers without any upfront capital investment in a data center.

    Online backup service providers can now configure the StoreGrid Cloud AMI virtual appliance to run as a backup server in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

    StoreGrid Cloud AMI will use the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store backup data from client machines at remote locations.

    The StoreGrid Cloud AMI virtual appliance also leverages Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) to store meta-data information in the MySQL relational database.

    Steve Rabuchin, director of Developer Relations and Business Development for Amazon Web Services, said AWS is designed to help alleviate for its customers, the cost and effort associated with building, operating and scaling technology infrastructure.

    "We are pleased that the StoreGrid Cloud AMI is able to leverage Amazon Web Services to extend this service to their customers," he said.

    Even service providers who want to keep backup data in their own data centers can use the StoreGrid Cloud AMI virtual appliance as a replication server. This deployment would enable them to replicate the backup data into the Amazon S3 storage cloud, thus offering more redundancy to the data.

    Sekar Vembu, CEO, Vembu Technologies

    Sekar Vembu, CEO, Vembu Technologies, said that investing, managing and scaling server and storage infrastructure is one of the most complex tasks for any online backup service provider.

    "StoreGrid Cloud AMI for Amazon Web Services eliminates this complexity by virtualizing the computing and storage infrastructure in a cloud," he said.

    Vembu released the Beta version of StoreGrid Cloud AMI in December 2008, and since then more than 50 service providers have been testing it.

    This production release incorporates feedback from these Beta partners, including the enhancement to use Amazon EBS as a temporary cache before uploading backup data to Amazon S3.

    StoreGrid Cloud AMI is available for purchase now and is priced as an annual subscription per StoreGrid backup client, with USD $30 for desktops and USD $60 for servers.

  • Oracle Readies Take-Over As Sun's Loss Grows


    As Oracle prepares its USD $7.4bn acquistion of Sun Microsystem, figures have emerged about the server and software maker’s latest quarter losses.

    Sun announced on Tuesday that it lost USD $201 million in the three months ended March 29. A year ago, Sun lost USD $34 million.

    The surprise deal, announced last week, takes Oracle into a whole new area – hardware, writes Samantha Sai for storage.biz-news.

    In a letter to partners and customers Oracle president, Charles Phillips, wrote: "Our customers have been asking us to step up to a broader role to reduce complexity, risk and cost by delivering a highly-optimized standards-based product stack.

    "Oracle plans to deliver these benefits by offering a broad range of products, including servers and storage, with all the integrated pieces: hardware operating system, database, middleware and applications."

    The general opinion in the market, however, is that IBM was a better fit for Sun than Oracle. IBM was already in the storage business.

    Wedbush Morgan’s analyst, Kaushik Roy, said Oracle is getting into totally new markets in which they have no expertise or history.

    "I am skeptical. Oracle is more likely to hold on to the entire storage business," he said.

    "Sun bought StorageTek and destroyed the company because of poor execution. But Oracle has been much better in execution, and it is very likely that the current storage group within Sun will have a better opportunity to grow."

    Oracle president, Charles Phillips

    The impact on other storage players and their relationship with Oracle will be determined in time.

    EMC–Oracle had a good relationship. Now they will be competitors.

    Kaushik Roy said: "But now with Oracle and Sun selling HDS at the high end, it would compete with EMC.

    "We will wait to see how those relationships pan out."

    As a result of this merger, Oracle is likely to wind up Sun’s storage hardware business in the long term.

    However, for the present the operation may continue.

    Illuminata analyst John Webster said that he is going on the assumption that Oracle runs Sun as Sun for a while before it starts restructuring.

    Also unknown as yet, is the positon of Sun-NetApp and the patent dispute over the ZFS file system.

    Stifel Nicolaus analyst Aaron Rakers said that Sun’s Open storage may also hit a question mark.

    "We have often been intrigued by some of Sun’s storage technologies," he wrote in a research note.

    "However, we have continued to see limited traction from an execution standpoint."

    It is expected that the presence of Oracle in the storage market will enliven the scenario. NetApp, EMC or 3PAR must be feeling the heat.

  • IDC: External Storage Cost Efficiency Assumptions Must Change


    While economies of scale have helped reduce power and cooling costs, other costs related to external storage prove to be more expensive than the storage itself, writes Samantha Sai for storage.biz-news.

    A recent IDC report estimates that the total cost to manage the world’s installed base of external storage is around 60 per cent of all storage related spending.

    This includes software, power, cooling, administration, personnel and services and excludes the cost of acquisition of the storage.

    David Reinsel, group vice president, IDC Storage and Semiconductors research, said that power and cooling costs are not the only costs associated with external storage.

    "In fact, in the grand scheme of things, the cost to power and cool external storage pales in comparison with the cost to acquire and manage storage, including the costs for storage software and storage administrators," he said.

    In the context of the economic meltdown IDC’s study comes as a stark reminder that the costs to power, cool and manage enterprise storage must be scrutinized in detail.

    It is also important to calculate the total cost of managing the world’s installed base of external storage.

    It is a fact that for every dollar spent on storage hardware, managers will spend three dollars for managing the stored information.

    There is an urgent and growing pressure to change assumptions around the adoption of more efficient storage technologies.

    The report asserts that the focus on energy reduction technologies is a must and firms must recognize the full extent of firms’ overheads.

    Storage management must be recognized as the key issue in today’s exploding data environment.

    Hundred terabyte and even petabyte sites are not uncommon and managers must look beyond the traditional methods of storing and securing critical corporate information.

    They should appreciate that deduplication, compression and thin provisioning have low penetration but high costs in terms of power and cooling.

    Advances in storage hardware and software have made solutions, like Hierarchical Storage management, archiving and disk grooming and automation, attractive.

  • 3PAR Launches Fastest Midrange Single-System Storage Array


    The global utility storage provider 3PAR has announced the launch of its InServ F400 Storage Server, writes Samanatha Sai for storage.biz-news.

    The company says it is the fastest single-system midrange storage array based on the results of the audit and peer review SPC-1 submitted to the Storage Performance Council (SPC) – a vendor neutral standards company.

    The storage array also is reported to provide one of the best price-to-performance ratios that have been submitted to the SPC so far.

    Brian Garrett, technical director of Enterprise Strategy Group Lab, said the latest round of SPC-1 Results proves that the Mesh-Active 3PAR architecture delivers industry-leading levels of performance across both high-end and midrange Fibre Channel arrays.

    "The advanced features of the 3PAR InServ F400 eliminate the performance and scalability compromises that typically accompany midrange storage," he said.

    "This is particularly crucial in this economy, where organizations are pressed to do more with less and are looking for low-cost, high-performance alternatives."

    The array uses a quad controller and is the only midrange array with this architecture in the market today.

    The quad controller is Mesh Active and was designed to overcome the technical limitations that were bothersome facts of traditional midrange arrays.

    The features and benefits associated with mid range arrays are all available at a price that is targeted to the midrange storage market.

    The results show that it has achieved a total of 93,050.06 SPC-1 IOPS, an 8.85-millisecond average response time, a total ASU capacity of 27,046.695 gigabytes, at a cost of USD $5.89/SPC-1 IOPS.

    Significantly there is 96 per cent capacity utilization right out of the box. Complex configuration or performance tuning such as "short stroking" is also not required to achieve these results.

    The F400 scales up to four clustered, Mesh-Active controller nodes powered by the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC with Thin BuiltIn.

    Moreover, each volume can be active on any mesh unlike the traditional midrange controller architectures where only one volume can be active on one Mesh.
    This results in the delivery of a robust, load balanced performance with mixed workloads.

    The Gen3 ASIC is also designed to process data and metadata independently in different processors or memory subsystems within the controller.

    This delivers high performance for mixed workloads. It also avoids the limitation that encourages legacy array sprawl and maintains performance integrity without having to deploy separate midrange array for each workload.

    David Scott, 3PAR CEO

    David Scott, 3PAR president and CEO, said the new F-Class delivers an efficient and simple midrange storage system that scales not only in capacity but also in performance and connectivity.

    "InServ F-Class arrays were designed to eliminate the scalability, efficiency, and management sacrifices typical with traditional midrange systems, and this SPC-1 Result proves that we have been able to do this while delivering performance and price-performance leadership," he said.

  • iPhone Beats Blackberry in Customer Satisfaction Survey


    The iPhone has come top of JD Power’s customer satisfaction study measuring consumer tastes.

    The Apple handset ranked highest among smartphone consumers judging five factors: ease of operation, operating system, features, physical design, and battery function.

    The only area where the iPhone didn’t score well was for battery life – an issue only too familiar with the devices’ owners.

    Overall the iPhone received 791 out of a 1,000-point scale, ahead of LG’s 772 points and Samsung’s 759 points. The trio were the only smartphone to rise above the industry average of 751 points.

    Those below the average were mainly companies making Windows Mobile devices, with HTC, Palm and Motorola earning scores of 744, 736 and 659 respectively.

    RIM’s BlackBerries also fared significantly lower than Apple with a 739 score.

    JD Power said that generally smartphone satisfaction has risen since its last survey in November 2008.

    Other findings include the fact that smartphone users send an average of 17 emails a day, and 82 per cent report that they use things like address books and to-do lists to stay organized.

    The survey included 2,648 smartphone users who owned their phone for less than two years.

  • Fring Targets Mainstream Users With New Funding


    VoIP start-up fring has announced that it intends to accelerate its growth plans after completing a third round of funding.

    Avi Shechter, fring co-founder and CEO, said a key objective is to make the free VoIP and IM service easier to use for mainstream "fringsters".

    While no details on the level of funding were available, all previous fring investors participated in this round including US based North Bridge Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Veritas Venture Partners and VenFin Limited.

    Shechter said fring is already turning the mobile into the "ultimate social device" by mashing up people’s favourite forms and modes of communication.

    "We plan to add to the fring experience and make it an ever more central part of fringsters’ social lives," he said.

    fring users can currently share experiences with friends on facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, among others, while communicating via Skype, MSN Messenger, GoogleTalk TM, Yahoo!TM, AIM and ICQ.

    Shechter said the new capital would be used to make fring even more accessible to the rest of the mobile world.

  • Demand For Web-Enabled TVs Surging, CEA Finds


    TV makers have been quick to recognise consumer appetite for connected TVs – and their ability to act as a differentiator in a crowded market.

    Rightly so as new research shows that nearly half of prospective TV buyers in the US intend to purchase an Internet-ready TV in the next year.

    Now a study by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has confirmed the growing interest, with 14.5 million consumers likely to purchase an Internet-connected TV in the next year.

    Shawn DuBravac, CEA economist and director of research, said consumers want more from their TV experience and marrying traditional television with Internet access is providing the next frontier of the television experience.

    "Consumers are already using the Internet while they watch TV," he said.

    "The next frontier is to create a seamless experience bringing the two together."

    Uses consumers gave for connected TVs include:

    • 48 per cent would find out about upcoming shows and identify a song that played during the show
    • 44 per cent would find out more about the actors
    • The top benefits of connected TVs, according to the study, are anytime-access to content and accessing the Web and TV broadcasts simultaneously.
    • The activities most likely to be converted from the PC to a connected TV include: watching online video (62 per cent), checking the weather (59 per cent) and playing online games (57 per cent).

  • BSkyB's Revenues Rise As HD Subscribers Double


    It’s taken a while but HDTV seems to have firmly established itself in the UK – underlined by the latest surge in subscriber numbers for BSkyB.

    The satellite broadcaster has seen its HD base leap to more than one million subscribers – up 32 per cent on the previous quarter and more than double the 465,000 who signed up last year.

    The strong uptake of its Sky+ HD service played a big part in increasing BSkyB’s Q3 revenues to GBP £1.4bn – up by 12 per cent compared with Q3 2008.

    Pre-tax profits grew 13 per cent to GBP £63m (USD $93m).

    Sky+ HD subscribers rose by 243,000 in Q3 2009, helped by a cut in the price of the HD set-top boxes from GBP £150 to £49.

    This decision cost the broadcaster around GBP £60m in upront cost but resulted in increased revenues from more expensive subscriptions.

    Average annual revenue per customer rose 7 per cent to GBP £452.

    Jeremy Darroch, BSkyB’s CEO, said the subscriber increase was generated by a growing trend towards HD among customers, alongside its HD box strategy.

  • 802.11n Wi-Fi Will Dominate Wireless HD Video


    802.11n Wi-fi technology will see off competitors in the wireless HD video market, at least for the next several years, according to In-Stat .

    Three other technologies are competing in this space – Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI), WirelessHD, and Ultrawideband (UWB).

    However, Brian O’Rourke, In-Stat analyst, said the ubiquity of Wi-Fi technology is proving unstoppable.

    He said 802.11n is the next generation of the immensely popular Wi-Fi family.

    "It promises data rates above 100Mbps and is backwards compatible," he said.

    "The installed base of Wi-Fi is immense, and effectively includes all mobile PCs, many mobile phones and a wide variety of CE devices.

    O’Rourke said the primary drawback to 802.11n is expense, since it requires codec technology on both ends to transmit HD video.

    Neither of its primary competitors, WHDI and WirelessHD, requires codecs.

    Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

    • UWB will not be a major factor in the consumer electronics market. Many chip companies are leaving the market in late 2008 and 2009.
    • Nearly 24 million digital TVs will ship with some type of Wireless HD video technology in 2013.
    • WHDI and WirelessHD are being promoted by startups, but they are new, expensive, and power-hungry, which is generally not a recipe for quick market success.
    • WHDI and WirelessHD will see a slow start, with fewer than eight million devices with those technologies shipped in 2013.

  • Sony Adds Web Connectivity to Bravia Range


    Sony has extended its BRAVIA HDTV range to include a new model that for the first time lets viewers access online services.

    The Z5500 uses Sony’s AppliCast technology to connect via its Ethernet port to the Internet.

    The HDTV can display RSS feeds and, through its XMB (XrossMediaBar) on-screen interface, provides a choice of widgets that can be simultaneously viewed while watching TV.

    Hiroshi Sakamoto, vice president, TV Marketing EuropeSony, said that alongside a pre-installed analogue clock and calendar, the Z5500 can download other networked widgets.

    The list includes: calculator, alarm, world clock and picture frame online, which allows you to display an image that is stored online when the TV is in Picture Frame Mode.

    The Z5500 also comes equipped with CI Plus interface, enabling broadcasters to offer premium content directly to TVs without the need for a separate set-top box.

    There’s also an integrated MPEG 4 AVC HD tuner for watching HD broadcasts without the need for a set-top box.

    The Z5500 will be available in three screen sizes (40-inch, 46-inch and 52-inch).