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  • Nexsan and FalconStor to Deliver New Nexsan DeDupe SG Family

    Nexsan Technologies, the provider of disk-based storage and FalconStor Software, the provider of data protection solutions, announced a strategic venture to deliver a joint solution, which has resulted in the delivery of an integrated deduplication product family for high-performance, power-efficient data storage.

    Based on Nexsan’s storage systems and the FalconStor File-interface Deduplication System (FDS) software, the new, Nexsan DeDupe SG ("Speed with Green") product family will be delivered by Nexsan through its worldwide network of channel partners.

    "The new self-optimizing capability of this product will help companies realize benefits in both power and data efficiency while automating critical storage management processes," said Lauren Whitehouse, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.

    Storage deduplication systems are primarily used as backup targets, operating only during the backup window. Even though the typical backup window is less than eight hours a day, the deduplication systems spin drives and burn energy for the remaining 16 hours, even while not in use. With Nexsan DeDupe SG, customers are supposed to get higher capacity and better performance during their backups and to save energy and reduce costs every hour that the system is not in use.

    Nexsan DeDupe SG leverages the green efficiencies inherent to its technology components: data reduction through high-speed deduplication, footprint reduction by utilizing space-efficient storage arrays, and substantial energy savings through AutoMAID technology.

    It also maximizes interoperability with all data sources, including disk-to-disk backup and archiving applications. It can be deployed in any physical or virtual infrastructure environment, offering file-level access to a central block-level deduplication repository. The product supports all major backup software, directly accepts Oracle RMAN, Microsoft SQL and other database dumps, and provides integrated data replication and deduplication.

    FalconStor FDS, the deduplication engine for the Nexsan DeDupe SG family, is a block-level deduplication software solution that presents a network share interface as a backup repository, offering space-saving option for writing data to disk.

  • West & Central African Com: The Complexity of African Markets

    VIDEO INTERVIEW: Osondu Nwokoro, Director of Regulatory Affairs of Zain Nigeria, was interviewed at the recent West & Central African Com conference held in Abuja, Nigeria.

    He explains the complexity of Nigerian and other African markets.

  • Sky to Launch 3D TV in 2010

    Sky has announced that it will launch the UK’s first 3D channel next year. The channel will offer a broad selection of the available 3D programming, which is expected to include movies, entertainment and sport.

    The service will be broadcast across Sky’s existing HD infrastructure and be available via the current generation of Sky+HD set-top boxes. To watch 3D, customers will also require a new ‘3D Ready’ TV, which are expected to be on sale in the UK next year.

    “3D is a genuinely ‘seeing is believing’ experience, making TV come to life as never before. Just like the launch of digital, Sky+ and HD, this is latest step in our commitment to innovating for customers,” said Brian Sullivan, Managing Director of Sky’s Customer Group.

    Sky became the first TV company in Europe that has successfully broadcasted a live event in 3D TV. On 2nd April 2009 they broadcast a performance by Keane live from Abbey Road Studios via the company’s satellite network to a Sky+HD set-top box and domestic 3D Ready TV.

    Sky has also confirmed the launch of a comprehensive ‘pull’ video-on-demand (VOD) service next year, to provide Sky+HD customers with additional choice and control to complement Sky+ and the current Sky Anytime ‘push’ VOD service. This new service will use the broadband capability of existing Sky+HD boxes.

    The jump from 2D to 3D

    TV has traditionally only been able to deliver a single image to a television screen. For all the innovation that we’ve seen in TV (including the move to colour, the migration to digital, and more recently, the launch of high definition services), all of these developments have only been able to work within the parameters of a single incoming TV feed – a 2D experience.
    So even though HD delivers an intensity and richness which results in exceptional clarity and detail, it is still based on the same underlying picture delivery mechanism as previous TV formats.

    3D TV is possible because of a series of major breakthroughs (principally in camera, post-production, encoding, set-top box and TV set technology) which means that domestic TVs are now capable of processing an image in a way that can deliver the depth information to the brain – much like the human eye – and hence add a further dimension to HD.

    For the first time, two images can now be merged and played out simultaneously on the same domestic TV display. Polarising glasses are currently used to help direct the correct left or right full colour on-screen image to the corresponding eye. The brain then processes each feed to create a single image, providing a level of depth and focus which means that the content is able to move to and from the foreground and therefore becomes three-dimensional.

  • Atlona Announces New AT-HD530 Down-Converter

    Atlona Technologies, solutions based manufacturer of Audio Video connectivity accessories, announced their soon to be released HDMI/DVI to Composite and S-Video Down-Converter, the AT-HD530.

    The device down-converts HDMI or DVI digital signal from PC, Mac, GPS System, Apple TV, Camcorder or Video Game to Analog S-Video or Composite Video with Audio. It is featured with HDMI/DVI loop-out.

    The converter has the ability to support resolutions of up to 1080p for HDTVs and up to UXGA (1600×1200@60Hz) with PC or Mac Computers. It is also able to automatically detect and down convert resolutions to those of to PAL or NTSC formats.

    It comes with HDMI video input and Digital Coaxial audio input ports. Output video format is selectable between Composite Video and S-Video.

    Unfortunately AT-HD530 is NOT-HDCP compatible and will not work with HDCP devices such as Cable/Sat Boxes and DVD players.

    New Atlona’s down-converter will be in stock late August with an MSRP of $299.00.

  • HDTVs in More than Half of All U.S. Homes

    A recent Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) report shows strong growth over the past year in HDTV ownership.

    In 2009, 53 percent of total U.S. households report owning a high definition television, an 18 percentage point increase in ownership over 2008, when 35 percent of households reported owning an HDTV (23 percent in 2007). Among HDTV set owners, 69 percent now subscribe to high definition service, compared to 56 percent a year ago.

    Ownership of large screen televisions –32 inches and larger – has also seen solid growth. In 2009, 59 percent of households owned one, up from 52 percent in 2008 (44 percent in 2007).

    The CTAM tracking study also took a look at recent movers and which technologies they are likely to purchase and services they’re likely to subscribe to over the next year. Movers are more likely than non-movers to buy an HDTV set (26 percent vs. 15 percent), a laptop (24 percent vs. 16 percent), and a video game system (23 percent vs. 7 percent); as well as subscribe to HD programming service (15 percent vs. 8 percent) and DVR service (17 percent vs. 7 percent).

    In 2009, digital cable market penetration was 34 percent, satellite was 28 percent, and telephone company penetration was 6 percent. Overall, cable has 53 percent of the market.

    “Cable continues to be the preferred provider for television services. Cable launched the digital tier well after satellite started selling an all-digital service, yet its customer numbers surpass those of the combined DBS companies,” said CTAM President and CEO Char Beales.

  • Texas Memory Systems Delivers Record 5-Million IOPS Flash-based SSD System

    Texas Memory Systems launches the RamSan-6200 SSD System that offers up to 100 terabytes of Flash-based storage in a 40U rack configuration that can sustain a record 5 million input/outputs per second (IOPS) with 60 gigabytes per second throughput while using a little over 6 kilowatts of power.

    To achieve the equivalent level of performance with hard disk-based storage arrays would require several thousand of the 15,000 RPM hard disk drives.

    The RamSan-6200 is a scaled up system that combines twenty RamSan-620 solid state disks in a single datacenter rack and uses Texas Memory Systems’ TeraWatch software to provide unified management and monitoring from a single GUI console. The system utilizes enterprise grade Single Level Cell (SLC) Flash as well as multiple levels of RAID and advanced Flash management algorithms.

    A single RamSan-620 unit provides 5TB of Single Level Cell (SLC) Flash with 250,000 sustained IOPS for random reads and random writes. Each RamSan-620 unit can support 2 to 8 Fibre Channel or up to 4 InfiniBand links.

    At the chip level, TMS uses only SLC Flash memory. Each Flash chip incorporates an Error Checking and Correction (ECC) data field within the chip to check and correct single-bit errors.

    At the board level, each set of Flash chips is organized as a board-level RAID, thereby eliminating any single chip failure from corrupting data.

    At the system level, the RamSan-620 allows to designate one of the cards inside the system as an active-spare that works hand-in-hand with the chip level RAID on each of our boards. If one of the cards experiences a failure that degrades its RAID protection, the system will immediately migrate the data on that card to the hot-spare to return to a fully redundant state.

  • Paradial to Deliver Firewall NAT Traversal Solution to Major Asian Telecom Operator

    Paradial, an IP-communications software developer, has signed an agreement with a major Asian telecom operator, a comprehensive provider of communications services in the region.

    The licensing agreement covers Paradial’s RealTunnel standards-based firewall and NAT traversal product, which includes STUN, TURN and ICE support.

    The RealTunnel is designed for solving the connectivity problem from the end user to the operator or ISP, often referred to as far-end NAT traversal.

    It is an open and SIP and H.323-compliant solution which makes SIP and H.323 clients work virtually with any firewall and network. It may be configured and setup as a VoIP SSL VPN. RealTunnel supports STUN, TURN, ICE, H.460 and other traversal technologies for SIP and H.323.

    It uses TCP to deliver the real-time characteristics usually supplied by RTP/UDP to audio and video communications applications.


     

    RealTunnel Firewall/NAT enables real-time audio and video communication applications across organizational and network boundaries, including the Internet and corporate intranets.

     

  • Proximity Communications Implements IP-ready Telephony for Nottinghamshire Healthcare

    Proximity Communications, provider of ICT services and solutions, announced it has completed the implementation of an IP-ready telephony solution for Nottinghamshire Healthcare, an NHS mental health and learning disability service provider.

    Deployed across 14 sites, the solution provides a single, resilient telephony platform, and incorporates a number of applications designed to reduce operational costs across the organisation, as well as improve productivity and collaboration within the workforce.

    The contract, which also includes 24/7 maintenance services to support the provision of round-the-clock emergency care, is designed to support Nottinghamshire Healthcare’s long-term transition to a fully converged IP network.

    Martin Harrison, telecoms project manager for Nottinghamshire Healthcare, explained that the company’s number one communications tool, telephony is essential for emergency scenarios and accessing medical expertise. “With many of our staff working in the field, we wanted our new system to help engender a greater sense of teamwork and collaboration,” he said.

    “Staff can quickly identify who’s working where; maintenance is handled at a central location; and, with applications such as auto-attendant, call handling is automated, helping to reduce costs and improve service delivery,” he added.

    Previously operating different telephony systems at each site, the newly networked platform is helping to reduce the complexity and cost of maintenance, and enhance patient care. As well as enabling staff to better share expertise, the central system is also helping the telecoms team to analyse and drive down the cost of lines and minutes across the organisation.

  • DataCore and Citrix to Distribute Free-To-Try DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance

    DataCore Software, the provider of storage virtualisation, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, announced that it has teamed up with Citrix Systems to distribute a free to try, downloadable, DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance. The company also released a Citrix StorageLink adapter to integrate its storage virtualisation solutions with Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

    The Virtual SAN Appliance evaluation software enables to try Citrix Essentials with a StorageLink-certified, iSCSI shared storage SAN that can pool up to 1 Terabyte of disk space, efficiently “Thin Provision” storage to virtual machines, speed up application performance and create snapshots for Instant Volume Cloning and Fast Disk-to-Disk Backups.

    The DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance and StorageLink Adapter can be downloaded at www.datacore.com/virtualSANappliance.

    “Customers want performance, productivity and manageability in a dynamic virtual infrastructure. Through StorageLink, DataCore presents to Citrix Essentials virtual disks that are well behaved, non-stop, lightning fast and waste-free, even though the physical storage behind it may come from a variety of manufacturers and be of a price, age and quality very different from one another,” said George Teixeira, DataCore president and CEO.

    DataCore has developed a fast-track “ramp up” programme for its partners, which provides them with NFR software and the opportunity to build their DataCore businesses at their own pace. The DataCore solutions are verified Citrix Ready through the Open Storage Program.

  • Motorola Accelerates TD-LTE Commercialization with Success in Trials

    Motorola announced successful completion of its joint Over-the-Air (OTA) trial with operators as part of the collaborative Time Division Duplex Long-Term Evolution (TD-LTE) commercialization.

    According to Motorola, its key trial achievements include:
    • First company to complete download throughput up to 70 megabits per second (Mbps) in a 20 megahertz (MHz) bandwidth channel
    • Mobility and hand-over with live applications
    • Multi-User Equipment (UE) testing under one sector

    All trial results have been submitted to the LTE/System Architecture Evolution (SAE) Trial Initiative (LSTI).

    Motorola’s LTE solution is comprised of its OFDM broadband platform and a selection of radio options that include MIMO and smart antennas as well as its self-organizing network (SON) solution. The portfolio includes frame based-mounted radios, remote radio heads and tower top radios to support a variety of LTE deployment scenarios.

    In addition to the collaborative trials with operators, Motorola is also engaged with the TD-LTE trials initiated by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as part of its efforts to develop a globally competitive TD-LTE industry.

    Motorola’s Wireless Broadband Access Solutions (WBAS) Hangzhou team and Wideband Base Transceiver Systems (WBTS) China team have been working with Chinese operators for many years to get TD-LTE closer to market reality in China.

    “Motorola is committed to broadband and 4G developments, and supports both TD-LTE and Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) LTE. We’ve made significant progress in TD-LTE commercialization as demonstrated by these trials," said Dr. Mohammad Akhtar, vice president and general manager of Motorola China.

    Equipment involved in these trials is based on Motorola’s second-generation OFDM products including Motorola’s Base Band Unit (BBU) that supports TD-LTE, FDD-LTE and WiMAX, and features a Remote Radio Unit (RRU) that supports 2×2 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO).

    “LTE is the next big technology in wireless networking and incorporates several key technologies such as smart antenna, all IP and OFDM to enable operators to deliver rich, high bandwidth, multimedia services,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, corporate vice president of Motorola.

    Earlier this year, Motorola deployed a live 700MHz LTE demonstration network in Las Vegas, replicating the successful 2.6GHz live LTE experience in Barcelona. During these two drive tours, visitors were driven around the streets to experience the performance of LTE in a real-life metropolitan RF environment.