Business News Holding

Tag: hardware-and-technology

  • Ditech Offers Network Operators More Deployment Options


    Ditech Networks today announced that its Packet Voice Processor (PVP) is now available in a smaller size.

    The move will give network operators and enterprises greater flexibility to support VoIP, 3G and Web 2.0 services.

    PVP now can be configured and deployed to support 1,000-4,000 sessions at the network’s edge, and up to 16,000 sessions in the core of the network.

    The company says this range and configurability make its PVP product the industry’s most flexible voice quality platform for IP services.

    Although the demand for VoIP, 3G and Web 2.0 services continues to increase significantly, the volume of IP voice traffic can vary widely at different points in the network.

    Network operators and enterprises need the ability to support a wide range of call volumes and the flexibility to increase capacity as demand for IP voice services grows.

    Ditech’s PVP product supports early stage markets and services, in addition to supporting the high-capacity requirements of IP voice services in the core of the network.

    Karl Brown, vice president of marketing at Ditech Networks, said the new low-density PVP chassis had all of the same functionality and performance of the higher-capacity product.

    But he said it was implemented in a way that offered network operators and enterprises more deployment options.

    “Ditech’s new form factor and session capacity ensures that PVP can meet the different network requirements of supporting the growth of IP voice services,” he said.

    Ditech’s PVP product now is available in two platform options: 13RU, 14-slot chassis for up to 16,000 sessions; and 5RU, 6-slot chassis for 1,000-4,000 sessions.

    Cards in the 6-slot chassis can be redeployed in the 14-slot chassis as the demand for network capacity increases.

  • Will Microsoft's Cloud-Computing Initiative Be Good For The Storage Industry?


    Microsoft this week finally laid out its cloud-computing strategy during a keynote speech at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008.

    Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, announced Windows Azure, a cloud-based service foundation underlying its Azure Services Platform.

    He explained Windows Azure’s role in delivering a software-plus-services approach to computing.

    The Azure Services Platform is intended to help developers build the next generation of applications that will span from the cloud to the enterprise data center and deliver compelling new experiences across the PC, web and phone.

    Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, Microsoft

    Azure gives Microsoft’s customers the choice of deploying applications via cloud-based Internet services or through on-premises servers, or to combine them in any way that makes the most sense for the needs of their business.

    While the much-awaited news makes clear Microsoft’s intentions, how will it affect the storage industry generally?

    The Register’s Chris Mellor has no doubt that the move towards a few large providers of cloud computing services will spell trouble for many storage vendors.

    Noting that Microsoft has now joined Amazon and Google in offering cloud computing services he cited IDC research, which says cloud computing will grow 16 per cent a year through to 2012.

    He points out that by 2012 there could be six major cloud computing suppliers – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Dell, HP and IBM – with half a million customers each by 2012, meaning 3 million fewer customers directly buying servers and storage for their apps because they’ve been transferred to the Cloud.

    While Mellor concedes that the storage industry is seen by some as being "ridiculously over-supplied", he concludes that the news that cloud computing is set to grow is very bad news for the storage industry.

    What do you think? Please send us your comment.

  • Enterprises Failing To Properly Encrypt Backup Data


    Backup tapes are being neglected by administrators, according to a study conducted jointly by security vendor Thales Group and Trust Catalyst.

    The results of the survey of 330 large enterprises worldwide showed that 35 per cent don’t know if they will encrypt their backup tapes.

    Failure to have a backup tape encryption plan could place an organization’s data at risk, leading it into a breach of compliance – and possible heavy financial losses.

    Kevin Bocek, director of product marketing at Thales, said storage departments were often more concerned with the cost and speed of data recovery than with encryption.

    Enterprises also felt they lacked access to technology adequate for enterprise-grade tape encryption.

    "Traditionally, storage has been a domain in and of itself, and IT security has been focusing on front-facing business applications, so they don’t pay that much attention to security," he said.

    "Previously, tape encryption technology used to be bolted on or would be an application used for general backup, and some didn’t trust those to encrypt their tapes for backup."

    The situation is changing, as more and more applications come with built-in encryption. However, a new problem then emerges – managing the encryption keys.

    If these are lost, then so is the data.

    The Thales study found that most people do not know where to store their encryption keys. More than 40 per cent of the survey’s respondents answered that they didn’t know where to store keys for seven out of 13 encryption apps.

    Most of the remainder stored their encryption keys in software or on a disk, while very few stored the keys in a dedicated appliance.

    Key management issues would continue to be an issue for backup media, according to Bocek.

  • Dialling INTO Your Smartphone To Get Easier


    Hundreds of millions of people have used Virtual Network Computing’s (VNC) remote access applications on their PCs.

    The Cambridge, UK-based company is now counting on the same success with its mobile version of allowing remote control both to and from smartphones.

    Speaking to smartphone.biz-news.com at the Smartphone Show in London, Andy Harter, CEO of VNC, said he expected the mobile edition to appeal to both IT departments and to consumers.

    With increasing numbers of employees now equipped with high-end handsets, he said the mobile viewer could be used for solving technical difficulties for staff in the field.

    The viewer could also give staff access to their office desktop machines if they needed to locate data not available on their handsets.

    Supporting all the major mobile platforms, including Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone and Mobile Linux, VNC Mobile provides cross-platform compatibility.

    Available in early 2009, no cost is yet available but Harter said the viewer would be priced sensibly.

    He said the applications could also be available on feature phones at some time in the near future.

  • Why Halt At Tethering One Device To Your Smartphone?


    It’s one thing to hear the corporate blurb about a product, quite another to hear company executives’ experience of using their own gear.

    Sean O’Leary, TapRoot Systems’ VP of marketing and business development, has just spent a week touring Europe relying on his company’s WalkingHotSpot software for internet connectivity.

    Launched six months ago as a beta version, the ability of the software to transform Windows Mobile 6 and S60 3G/Wi-Fi handsets into walking “hotspots” has proved very popular.

    The application is capable of tethering up to five devices through a Wi-Fi enabled smartphone.

    Users can retrieve emails and surf the web on devices such as laptops and MP3 players using their handsets’ wireless data plan without the need for the added expense of data cards and dongles.

    While O’Leary was never going to be the most neutral of critics there’s no doubt he is more than pleased with the success of his first hand exposure to the application.

    “Even using it on trains around Europe it worked seamlessly and there was never any problem with connecting,” he told smartphone.biz-news.com at the Smartphone Show in London.

    While 30 per cent of software downloads have been in the US, Europe hasn’t been slow to catch on to the advantages of WalkingHotSpot.

    O’Leary said it was possible to make calls while devices were connected without any degradation in quality for either the devices or the phone call.

    The software is available to download for either a one-time fee of USD $24.99 (€18) for the lifetime of the phone or as a monthly plan for USD $6.99 (€5).

    O’Leary said support for other major operating systems is coming soon.

    To owners of iPhones just being able to easily hook up one device to their handsets would be ample.

  • Hitachi Unveils Midrange Storage Platform


    Hitachi Data Systems has unveiled its next-generation line-up of midrange storage systems, the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) 2000 Series.

    The company says the ground-breaking new systems introduce a wide range of pioneering technologies previously unavailable on a midrange storage platform.

    It says they deliver improved performance, connectivity, scalability, reliability and ease-of-use to midrange customers.

    Customers benefit by implementing a sophisticated, cost-effective midrange storage platform that can scale to better address their growing storage environments and diverse application requirements.

    Mark Peters, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group, said that mid-sized businesses and operations have precisely the same challenges as larger ones.

    But he said the storage industry often met their needs for reduced scale and increased affordability with a significantly compromised feature set.

    "The new AMS products from Hitachi turn such old-fashioned notions on their head, providing mid-sized storage systems that blend advanced functionality and affordability with flexibility and ease of use,” he said.

    “Hitachi’s innovative combination of a SAS backend with an advanced active-active controller is what underpins the systems’ extensive capabilities, which users can access via a straightforward GUI.”

    The Hitachi AMS Series 2000 delivers up to 4x the performance compared to prior generations, and also offers storage consolidation for iSCSI, NAS, and Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) connections.

    The AMS Series 2000 is comprised of three models: the Hitachi AMS 2100, the Hitachi AMS 2300, and the Hitachi AMS 2500.

    The entire portfolio of midrange storage systems meets the benchmarking standard "Five 9’s" of availability, 99.999 per cent uptime.

    The new Hitachi AMS Series 2000 delivers the following:

    • The industry’s Hitachi Dynamic Load Balancing Controller turbocharges the storage system to peak levels of performance with virtually no-touch.
    • Unlike asymmetrical controller designs of traditional midrange storage systems, the breakthrough Hitachi Dynamic Load Balancing Controller eliminates typical bottlenecks and “hot spots” that can decrease I/O response times by monitoring utilization rates of each controller and dynamically enables workload balancing.
    • The industry’s first 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Backplane in a midrange storage platform, providing the fastest, most cost-effective way to process and transfer data through a storage controller engine.
    • This breakthrough technology curbs the architectural limitations of arbitrated loop designs with support for up to 32 3Gb/s high-performance point-to-point links that deliver a blistering 9600 MB/sec of bandwidth and dramatically speed data transfer.

  • Smartphone Users Offered Software To Scrub Data


    Smartphone users worried about what would happen to confidential info in old handsets can sleep a little easier.

    Aiko Solutions has come up with what it claims is an industry-first – software that really does erase all data from a smartphone, according to smartphone.biz-news.com.

    The solution could be good news for many people as a nearly a quarter of re-sold smartphones contain sensitive data, according to recent research.

    BlackBerry owners were the worst offenders for discarding their handsets with sensitive company and personal information.

    Aiko Solutions says SecuWipe is an advanced software utility to securely sanitize data on Windows Mobile Pocket PCs, Smartphones and Windows CE handhelds.

  • SecuWipe Software Erases Smartphone Data


    Aiko Solutions has announced the public release of SecuWipe, a data erasure utility for PDAs and smartphones.

    Concerns over smartphone security have been rising steadily, not least because of the handsets’ great capacity for storing large amounts of corporate and personal information.

    Standard “deletion” and even a “hard reset” do not completely wipe data off the device, with the result that sensitive information can still be easily retrieved by using special recovery software.

    Aiko is claiming an industry first by offering software that overwrites data with US DoD (Department of Defense) compliant methods and makes data truly erased and unrecoverable.

    The security software developer says SecuWipe is an advanced software utility to securely sanitize data on Windows Mobile Pocket PCs, Smartphones and Windows CE handhelds.

    It says the solution can be used to clean the Smartphone before recycling or to remove traces of online activity, SMS and calls records.

    “SecuWipe is the best choice for those who want to avoid security breaches and protect customer privacy,” according to a statement from the company.

    The program employs different data sanitizing algorithms, including zero-filling, U.S. DoD 5220.22-M method, Bruce Schneier’s algorithm, and Peter Gutman’s algorithm.

    SecuWipe will securely erase:

    • Contacts
    • Email, SMS, MMS messages
    • Calls
    • Appointments, Tasks
    • Notes, Recordings
    • Internet Cache, Cookies and History
    • Free Space
    • SD card(s)
    • Files and Folders

    SecuWipe is available as a demo version at no cost, and it can be downloaded. A single-user license can be securely purchased online for USD $39.95. Volume and academic pricing is available upon request.

  • SingleHop Offers 2 Gigs RAM Free


    Managed dedicated hosting provider, SingleHop, has announced that it has completed a free of charge, memory upgrade program.

    Over 900 SingleHop customers had less than 2 GB of RAM in their servers when the program commenced in July 2008.

    The company says now almost every customer has a minimum 2 GB of RAM.

    All new customers will receive a minimum of 2 GB of RAM in their servers, also free of charge.

    SingleHop allowed customers to schedule the time and date when their upgrade would be performed during the process.

    The entire program, valued at over USD $100,000, was aimed at increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction, as well as improving SingleHop’s competitiveness in the marketplace.

    Zak Boca, president of SingleHop, said two very important goals were accomplished through the upgrade program.

    “First we increased the satisfaction and loyalty of our existing clients by giving them an upgrade for free,” he said. “Second, we made our server offerings more competitive with the overall marketplace.”

    Boca said many hosting providers like to upgrade their packages for new clients, but don’t touch the packages for existing customers. He said this was counter-productive.

    “We’re just as concerned with keeping current customers happy as we are with attracting new ones,” he said.

    The third quarter of 2008 has seen a huge surge in SingleHop product offerings including:

    • the IPCast Pay-As-You-Go Content Delivery Network
    • the announcement of LEAP, the server manager webtop client portal
    • the company’s free 2GB RAM upgrade for existing clients
    • the release of Advanced Automatic Server Provisioning (AASP), a technology exclusive to SingleHop and LEAP, which drastically increases server installation time as well as reduces human error. Additionally LEAP features SingleHop’s exclusive IP ensure technology, which guarantees that clients will only receive clean IP addresses.

  • IBM Expands Storage Virtualization for SMBs


    IBM is to introduce a cheaper and less powerful version of it storage virtualization software for use by small and medium sized (SMB) businesses.

    The System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) software is designed to help improve storage utilization rates, energy efficiency, administrator productivity, availability, and scalability of critical applications.

    It is intended to significantly improve the flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructures by creating consolidated, virtual pools of information.

    This is seen as a key issue for SMBs with exploding volumes of data that are looking to control costs while also responding to the changing business environment.

    Barry Rudolph, vice president, IBM System Storage, said the company had been the leader in storage virtualization since SVC was introduced five years ago.

    “By incorporating a more accessible and affordable product through our IBM Business Partners we are giving clients what they have been asking for – a way to incorporate green and efficient technologies into their information infrastructures to manage the data center crisis of today."

    SVC Entry Edition is planned to be generally available on November 21.