Business News Holding

Tag: virtualization

  • HP Launches New SMB Storage Offerings, Cuts Staff


    Hewlett-Packard is to introduce several new storage, virtualization, PC, printing and services offerings in an effort to capture a larger share of the Small and Midsize Business (SMB) market.

    The move comes as the company begins consultations on cutting nearly six thousand European jobs, including 850 in the UK and Germany.

    Many of these are at its plant in Erskine, Renfrewshire, because production of servers and storage devices is moving to the Czech Republic.

    HP had warned that more job cuts were coming when it announced second quarter results recently. The company made profits of USD $1.72bn on sales of USD $27.4bn in the three months ended April.

    The new offerings announced this week are part of the Hewlett-Packard Total Care initiative for SMBs, aimed at providing a full range of products, services, tools, training, financing and recycling.

    On the storage side, HP unveiled a new SMB line of appliances and expanded its existing MSA family.

    This includes the StorageWorks X1000 family of appliances, which brings together both file storage and application-based storage.

    The X1000 line replaces HP’s entry-level All-in-One storage appliances. It is based on the vendor’s latest-generation ProLiant G6 server platform, and includes Microsoft’s new Windows Storage Server 2008 Standard x64 Edition operating system.

    Another newcomer is the StorageWorks X3000, a gateway appliance that connects to other storage capacity on the back end to add iSCSI and file services capabilities to existing storage arrays.

    HP also unveiled two new models in its MSA 2000 family of storage arrays. The StorageWorks 2000i includes an iSCSI interface, and the StorageWorks 2000sa includes a SAS interface.

    HP also is helping smaller businesses with new virtualization bundles that include both server and storage technology.

    The bundles include a combination of ProLiant servers, LeftHand software for building virtual storage appliances, VMware software for building virtual servers, ProCurve switches and HP’s Insight management software.

  • Consumer Network Storage Equipment Market Growing, More Promotion Needed


    Consumer demand for data storage is expected to drive Network Attached Storage (NAS) revenues to more than USD $1.25 billion in revenues by 2011.

    That’s the conclusion of ABI Research, which says the phenomenal growth of digital photography, audio, and video have focused consumers’ minds on the need for secure storage.

    Jason Blackwell, ABI Research senior analyst, says the need to store precious pictures, music, and movies has raised the profile of backup and media server solutions.

    He said that although most consumers still rely on single-computer backup scenarios, a small but growing number are opting for NAS.

    But the market needs to be promoted more to ensure an even greater uptake.

    "In order to move the consumer NAS market forward, vendors, including leaders such as Buffalo Technology and Linksys by Cisco, need to educate and inform consumers about NAS’s advantages," he said.

    Consumer NAS equipment falls into three groups:

    • Integrated NAS drives, which include the necessary networking software
    • Network storage enclosures, for those who wish to add the hard disk themselves
    • Storage routers and bridges, which allow attachment of standard USB or IEEE 1394 hard drives to a network

    Blackwell says that integrated NAS drives comprise the lion’s share of the market, but storage routers and bridges offer vendors the greatest growth opportunity.

    Challenges in this market have traditionally included consumers’ relative indifference to data security: backups have always been considered a bore.

    So marketing and customer education will be key to success. Cost has been an issue too: while prices continue to fall, they still pose a barrier to adoption.

    Blackwell says the rise of the home media server market, however, will provide some lift: DLNA and UPnP-enabled NAS devices can act as media
    servers and are being branded as such.

    "The fact that NAS devices are becoming more like media servers will certainly help them penetrate the digital home network," he said.

    "Vendors are making a concerted effort to market NAS for these more exciting purposes rather than simply for backup."

  • Optimism Seems High in the Storage Efficiency World

    Optimism remains high in storage efficiency world despite recession and talks of possibly impending depression. The focus seems to be on doing more with less and optimizing on existing capacities.

    Nick Broadbent, UK Managing Director of DataCore Software says: 
“Virtualisation and hence consolidation has transformed all that with IT managers able to meet the business data growth needs by re-utilising external storage solutions already in their network.”

    Joyce Putscher, In-Stat analyst feels that there is a significant shift towards higher capacity models. He says, "While the overall market is maturing, growth is shifting towards higher capacity models… The 1.5TB+ segment is forecasted to see the highest growth, exceeding 100 per cent CAGR."

    Data deduplication, 6 GB’s SAS, FCoe, Virtualization, automation, optimization and cost savings seems to be the mantra that is doing the rounds.
    Deduplication is seen as a means of generating a quick return on investment and several vendors are pushing the technology this week.
    Storage capacity optimization appliances for primary and backup storage also have generated a lot of interest.
    Data reduction solutions from Hifn, backup acceleration options for virtual tape libraries, data reduction technology for cloud form Nirvanix and Ocarina are significant in this scenario. Virtualization and automation gained favor and disaster recovery advisor from Symantec was unveiled. NetApp has announced new storage and data management features for VMWare for virtual desktop environments. SAS attracted attention for its high performance, low cost solution, while ATTO announced FastStream SC 8200 controller and 3PAR unveiled its InSery F-Class Storage Servers. Data Robotics announced its DroboPro.

    In this backdrop there the venture funding announcement from Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Dell ventures and Focus Ventures, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Valhalla Partners and HarborVest Partners, further signals that the interest in the Storage sector has not died down. Fusion_IO received a whopping $47.5 million and Sepaton netted $15.5 million.

    All this keeps optimism high and market watchers agree that while the Storage industry seems to be slowing down due to the recession the slow down is minimal and not very alarming. It is true that external disk storage system numbers are being affected by market conditions, but storage efficiency technologies are picking up. Sean Haffey, storage product manager at FSC, says that there is no doubt that the external disk market is slowing. “When things were booming 18 months ago it was a question of how fast you could go to market,” he said. “Now it is a case of how efficiently you can run.

  • IBM Buys Transitive To Cut Customer Costs


    IBM is to to buy Transitive in an acquisition intended to help its customers cut costs.

    Once the deal is completed, IBM is expected to move the virtualization software company’s California personnel to one of IBM’s local sites.

    Research and development staff located in Manchester, UK, will remain at their current facilities.

    IBM has been using Transitive’s technology in its IBM PowerVMTM software, which consolidates customers’ Linux workloads onto IBM systems, since January .

    Transitive has sold more than 10 million copies of its cross-platform virtualization technology and has 48 patents.

    Its product, QuickTransit, allows software applications that have been compiled for one operating system run on systems with different processors or operating systems without modifications.

    Transitive’s technology is based on research developed at Manchester University in 1992. The company was founded five years later by Alasdair Rawsthorne, a computer-science lecturer, and a team of his graduate students to bring QuickTransit to market.

    In 2005 the company signed Apple as its first major customer.

    Apple and Silicon Graphics, along with IBM, are Transitive’s OEM customers. The company has been providing QuickTransit technology to run Apple’s Rosetta translation software and the product is shipped on all of Apple’s Intel-based computers.

    No price has been released for the purchase.

  • Virtualization Heads Gartner's Strategic Technology List


    Virtualization     is the technology with the potential for having the most “significant impact” on enterprises over the next three years, according to Gartner.

    Every year the analyst firm highlights the top 10 technologies and trends it predicts will be strategic for most organizations.

    Virtualization, which ranked fifth on Gartner’s list last year, has moved to the top slot for 2009.

    Gartner defines "significant impact" as including factors such as high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

    David Cearley, vice president at Gartner, said strategic technologies affect, run, grow and transform the business initiatives of an organization.

    "Companies should look at these 10 opportunities and evaluate where these technologies can add value to their business services and solutions, as well as develop a process for detecting and evaluating the business value of new technologies as they enter the market," he said.

    Cloud computing ranked second in the list, while servers came third.