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  • Telehouse Offers Service to Reduce Data Loss Risk


    TELEHOUSE America has announced it is offering Integralis’ data loss prevention (DLP) consulting services as part of its Manage-E solution.

    Manage-E customers of TELEHOUSE can now leverage global information risk management provider Integralis’ expertise in all aspects of DLP and data risk management, as well as its comprehensive methodology to determine an organization’s unique data risk factors and the appropriate data protection policies, processes and solutions.

    Akio Sugeno, TELEHOUSE’s senior director of business development, internet engineering and operations, said: "With data breach incidents, compliance pressures and the use of Web 2.0 tools rising, companies are seeking a more thorough understanding about the nature and scope of their DLP risk and how to solve it.

    "Together with Integralis, we’re bringing that knowledge and service to our customers."

    Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, wikis and social media, are presenting new data security Relevant Products/Services challenges for companies, according to Eric Greenberg, senior vice president of security and risk solutions at Integralis.

    "Companies are exposing all kinds of information on the Web, from sensitive HR information to IP such as future product plans," he said.

    Integralis services provided through TELEHOUSE’s DLP Manage-E solution include:

    • data identification, location and classification
    • auditing and assessing at-risk data
    • policies, reporting and metrics to better manage data risk and control sprawl over the entire information lifecycle
    • recommendations and ongoing management of IT products and services to help organizations limit their DLP risk
    • Limiting proprietary and sensitive data loss is of particular concern to C-level executives when it comes to compliance

    "Compliance is about controls on risk and accidental risk is uncontrolled risk," said Greenberg."There’s no doubt that organizations without Web 2.0 policies, processes and technologies in place, and ways to enforce them, are creating vulnerabilities that can lead to compliance violations."

  • Seagate Loses $81m in Q2, Ships 40.6 million HDDs


    Seagate reported a loss of USD $81 million on revenue of $2.35 billion for the second quarter of this year.

    Despite the poor results, the company said it is seeing signs that the storage market is improving and it is making progress toward returning to sustained GAAP profitability as soon as possible.

    Seagate said it shipped 40.6 million hard drives during the quarter and a total of 163.8 million units for the fiscal year ended on July 3, 2009.

    Revenue for the year was revenue of USD $9.8 billion, the net loss was $3.1 billion.

    Steve Luczo, Seagate’s CEO, said the overall organizational, operational, technical and product progress made during the last six months is reflected in the company’s financial results for the June quarter.

    "We are also seeing signs that the storage markets are improving and are providing better visibility into the demand environment," he said.

    Steve Luczo, Seagate’s CEO

    "Our approach to the September quarter with respect to our production volumes and product mix is to continue to manage our factories with an intense focus on maximizing our return on invested capital while satisfying our customers’ requirements."

    The company remains cautious on its business outlook and mentioned that it is difficult to predict product demand and other related matters.

    For the September quarter, the company is planning for the overall industry demand for disk drives to be between 135 and 140 million units.

  • Iron Mountain Unveils First UK Cloud-Based File Archiving Customer


    Iron Mountain Digital has announced that it has signed its first European customer for its recently launched Virtual File Store service.

    The provider of STorage-as-a-Service (STaaS) for backup and archiving’s Virtual File Store solution is an enterprise-class cloud-based data archiving service designed to help companies reduce the costs of storing and managing inactive data.

    Iain Douglas, IT director at multinational IT security company Integralis, said they chose Virtual File Store due to its proven ability to achieve efficiencies for businesses.

    "Integralis has experienced exponential growth in internal data generation and is currently storing 3.5 terabytes of data on its system," he said.

    "We have worked with Iron Mountain Digital over the past two years to help us manage this growth, and solutions such as Iron Mountain’s automated, online LiveVault server backup solution have helped us to ensure that more control and flexibility of access to data has been achieved for our IT department."

    Douglas said that by piloting, and now taking on the Virtual File Store service, they had not only been able to maintain the high levels of flexibility and accessibility to theirs data but also to make cost efficiencies as inactive data can now be stored in the cloud.

    "This service complements our mixture of server and tape based backup perfectly and has allowed us to gain a lot more control over our information," he said.

    Integralis currently uses the Virtual File Store solution to store inactive data and Iron Mountain’s LiveVault server backup and recovery solution to protect its active operational data.

    With the Virtual File Store service in place, Integralis anticipate a 30 per cent reduction in storage spend in the future.

    In particular, the company has found that specifically by combining LiveVault and Virtual File Storage services, significant cost efficiencies can be made to the business.

    "We use three other services from Iron Mountain Digital and now with the addition of Virtual File Store, it’s the missing link in their portfolio," said Douglas.

    Integralis currently combines Iron Mountain Digital’s Connected Backup for PC, Connected Backup for Server and LiveVault server backup and recovery solution for protecting and managing its information.

    Richard Ellis, manager of the UK & Ireland’s direct and channel business at Iron Mountain Digital said: "We are delighted to announce Integralis as our first European customer to use the Virtual File Store service.

    "After an audit, Integralis had 20 percent of its records marked as ‘inactive’ which was a huge area where cost savings could be made.

    "The Virtual File Store solution allows Integralis to store vital, yet inactive records safely and still have on-demand access to them whilst reducing costs."

  • HSBC Fined $5.2 Million in UK for Data Loss


    Three units of HSBC Group have been fined GBP 3.185 million (USD $5.2 million) by Britain’s financial regulator for failing to protect consumer data from loss or theft.

    The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said all three firms had been warned by HSBC Group Insurance’s compliance team about the need for robust data security controls in July 2007.

    But in February 2008 an unencrypted CD containing the details of 180,000 policy holders was lost in the post.

    The FSA said HSBC Life UK Ltd was fined GBP 1.61 million, HSBC Actuaries and Consultants Ltd was fined GBP 875,000 and HSBC Insurance Brokers Ltd was fined GBP 700,000.

    HSBC said that no clients had reported losses as a result of these failures.

    It said it found that large amounts of unencrypted customer data had been sent by post or courier to third parties.

    Confidential information about customers was left on open shelves or in unlocked cabinets, and staff were not given sufficient training on identifying and managing risks like identity theft, the regulator said.

    Margaret Cole, the agency’s director of enforcement, said all three firms failed their customers by being careless with personal details which could have ended up in the hands of criminals.

    "It is also worrying that increasing awareness around the importance of keeping personal information safe and the dangers of fraud did not prompt the firms to do more to protect their customers’ details," she said.

    The largest previous fine for data protection failures was the GBP 1.26 million pounds assessed against Norwich Union.

    HSBC said it had contacted customers who were potentially affected, and said 33,500 employees had received data protection training.

    "We hold ourselves to the highest standards, but it is clear that in these instances we have fallen short, which we sincerely regret," said Clive Bannister, group managing director of HSBC Insurance.

  • EMC Q2 Results Better Than Expected, Completes Data Domain Acquisition


    EMC has reported a slight increase in revenue last quarter and provided an optimistic forecast for the second half of the year.

    The announcement came as it completed the USD $2.1 billion acquisition of data deduplication specialist Data Domain.

    The company said that IT budgets have stabilized and customers are more confident about their visibility.

    It reported net income of USD $205.2 million on revenue of USD $3.26 billion, down 11 per cent from a year ago.

    On the revenue front, EMC now projects 2009 sales of USD $13.8 billion compared with previous estimates of $13.5 billion.

    Data Domain, whose acquisition closed today, will contribute USD $200 million in revenue for 2009 and will be neutral to non-GAAP earnings.

    Meanwhile, third quarter revenue is expected to rise 2 to 3 per cent sequentially excluding Data Domain results. Data Domain’s inclusion results in sequential growth of four to five per cent.

    EMC CEO, Joe Tucci, said that EMC expects the company to generate double-digit revenue growth rates.

    "when IT markets resume to a more normal spending rate," he added.

    Meanwhile, the fate of EMC’s current data deduplication partner, Quantum Corp., remains unclear after EMC executives avoided mentioning the firm during the earnings call.

    To most industry watchers, the writing seems to be on the wall for Quantum.

  • Tadiran Telecom Eyes VoIP market in Africa, Partners Teledata


    Tadiran Telecom has signed a distribution agreement with Teledata Technologies in a collaboration aimed at targeting "vast" VoIP opportunities in the African telecom market.

    The IP business telephony and communications supplier has also announced the appointment of Zeev Aviv as acting President and CEO.

    Until recently, he served as VP Sales and Marketing.

    He will be replacing Eitan Livneh, who served as President and CEO since early 2007.

    Aviv said Africa is one of the most valuable emerging markets, with opportunities abounding in Kenya and by extension the wider East and Central Africa region.

    "It is a fertile market that has great opportunities for telecom growth," he said.

    Aviv said numerous tenders are currently advertised for corporate telephony solutions that specify IP-PBX platforms.

    He said the demand for VoIP telephony services in the region has drastically increased due to improved cost-benefit awareness.

    Many corporate organizations are decentralizing regionally (with Nairobi as the region’s hub) and are looking for converged solutions with maximum ROI.

    In many organizations, the older-generation, traditional PABXs are now being phased out due to the emerging technological trends and the related cost benefits.

    Requirements are expected to increase drastically with the advent of the TEAMS undersea fiber optic cable project (linking the East Africa region) and due to the increase of Internet bandwidth IP converged solutions.

    Duke Onkundi, of Teledata, said his company’s knowledge of the Kenyan evolving market, enabled it to determine Tadiran Telecom’s solution as the most suitable fit.

    "It will facilitate a seamless move to VOIP with no loss of investment in legacy systems and combining the best aspects of both quality and financial feasibility," he said.

  • Skype Users Rise by 37m, Revenues up 25% in Q2


    Skype’s subscriber base just keeps on climbing, with another 37 million people added in the second quarter – taking the total year-to-date increase to 75 million.

    Growing subscribers also means growing revenues and the VoIP company saw Q2 revenue jump 25 per cent year-over-year to USD $170 million.

    The Skype figures were contained within parent company eBay’s financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2009.

    Its news was not quite so good. The ecommerce company posted second quarter revenue of USD $2.10 billion, a $97.7 million year-over-year decrease.

    The year-over-year revenue growth of PayPal and Skype was offset by the effects of the stronger dollar and a modest decline in the Marketplaces business.

    Another healthy quarter of growth under its belt will do no harms to Skype’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) price as eBay prepares to take the VoIP company public in early 2010.

    Provided the P2P technology lawsuit gets settled first.

  • VOD Viewing Jumps 15% in June


    The number of people watching video-on-demand (VOD) programming in the US surged in June – fuelled by rises in the popularity of pay-per-view content and more children taking advantage of free programming, according to Rentrak.

    The increases made June the most-viewed month for video-on-demand this year, delivering more than 589 million transactions.

    According to Rentrak’s OnDemand Essentials service, year-to-year comparison for the month of June delivered a 15 per cent increase in overall VOD transactions and a 16 per cent increase in the number of unique set top boxes (STBs) accessing OnDemand.

    Additionally, free-on-demand (FOD) Kids content was up 7 per cent from May figures and delivered its strongest month of the year with more than 106 million transactions.

    June is historically a strong month for transactional-on-demand (TOD) viewing, and TOD continued this trend by delivering the highest number of transactions in a single month so far this year for the category.

  • Universal Adds iPhone/iPod Features to Blu-ray Titles


    Universal Studios has announced plans to add a series of iPhone and iPod touch-enabled features on its upcoming Blu-ray releases.

    These will enable access to exclusive interactive content through the mobile devices – starting with the Blu-ray release of the box-office smash Fast & Furious on July 28th.

    The free app will be available from Apple’s App Store on the same day and will give users the ability to control interactive content on web connected Blu-ray players.

    One of the features, Virtual Car Garage, will give users360-degree views of the cars in the movie, as well as the ability to call up exclusive technical specs.

    Later this year, Universal will extend the features to allow access to bonus content on Blu-ray discs, which will be downloadable to the iPhone/iPod touch to watch features on-the-go.

    The devices will also be able to be used as a virtual remote to control Blu-ray disc features and/or access additional detailed information about the film, its cast and more while watching the movie.

    Releases will also integrate with social network applications or sites such as Facebook and Twitter to allow users to update their friends about movie-related activities.

  • Vivitek Targets US With $999 1080p DLP Projector


    Vivitek has signalled its intention to penetrate the US home-theater projector market with the unveiling of its latest FullHD 1080p home-theater projector.

    The H1080FD FullHD model, which is based on Texas Instruments’ S450 chip/light-engine design, will go on sale in August for a price of USD $999.

    Christopher Yang, Vivitek senior product manager, said that by combining the latest digital technologies in a portable and economical package, the new model offered "amazing" HD content without compromises.

    While the projector’s specs are modest, this is to be expected given the price tag.

    Features include 1,800 lumens of brightness and a 5,000:1 contrast ratio.

    The unit’s I/O ports include: two HDMI inputs, composite video, S-video, and component video inputs, RS-232c data control and a 12v trigger.

    Lamp life is rated at 3,000 hours and Vivitek has designed the cabinet for easy bulb access, enabling users to replace burned out lamps.

    Vivitek offers a one-year limited warranty on parts and labor and a 90-day lamp warranty.
    Vivitek's Christopher Yang withthe H1080P Projector
    The unit’s noise level is listed at 29dB, and the fan vents from the sides, unlike many models that vent from the front.

    Vivitek is in the process of compiling a full line of home-theater and business projectors.

    It is also selecting authorized dealers to carry top performing models for custom installation and specialty A/V channels.

    As part of this move, the company is hiring new channel specialists, revamping it Web site and has signed AVAD, Tech Data and DBL Distributing to help get the products and the brand to the right dealers.