Storage Breaking News

Economic malaise hits IT industry
Earnings disappointments, IPO dry spell signal financial problems for the IT industry. More..

Amazon to offer volume discounts for S3
Amazon's AWS cloud computing subsidiary will institute a new tiered pricing structure for its hosted storage service that includes price cuts for high-volume customers. More..

Brocade gets loan to fund Foundry buyout
Brocade Communications Systems on Tuesday secured a $1.1 billion loan to fund its acquisition of Foundry Networks despite a tightening of credit markets amid the Wall Street meltdown. More..

Nortel aims unified communications package at SMBs
Nortel this week unveiled a unified communications platform for small/medium businesses that the company says allows them to save up to 70% of their investment in legacy Nortel phone systems. More..

8 best buys for essential gear
Pop quiz: Which would you rather have on a business trip, clean socks or your laptop? These days, clean socks are nice, but the laptop is indispensable, just as a desktop is at home, a camera is on vacation, and a cell phone is pretty much everywhere. More..

Broadcom, Skyhook join for better location data
Broadcom will enhance its mobile device chipsets and location-based services (LBS) infrastructure through a partnership with Skyhook Wireless, the company that powers the iPhone's location feature using Wi-Fi access points. More..

Reinventing storage virtualization
The initial approach to storage virtualization, which has been around for years, was to address it in the storage-area network  because the SAN sat between the storage and servers, and would cause the least disruption to these systems. However, after nearly a decade, this approach has not taken off while server virtualization has become widely accepted. What needs to be changed to make storage virtualization as ubiquitous as server virtualization? More..

Konica Minolta shows prototype communicator headset
Walk along the halls of the Ceatec electronics show here in Japan and you're likely to see all manner of gadgets and gizmos, but few sights might startle you more than Ichiro Kasai. More..

British firm claims to crack compliance headache
British software company Open-Tec has developed what it claims is a 'market disrupting' technology that will offer managers more efficient data storage and more effective compliance. More..

Unicycling robot to meet micro cars at Japan's Ceatec
A unicycling robot, prototype fuel cells and a TV that doesn't need a stand are just some of what visitors to next week's Ceatec electronics fair in Japan will find when the doors open on Tuesday morning. More..

Ellison pitches high-speed data warehouse server
Oracle saved the biggest news for last at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. CEO Larry Ellison took the stage Wednesday afternoon to announce two hardware products developed with Hewlett-Packard that are designed to provide very high performance for data warehousing applications. More..

Dual access for the SOHO/ROBO revisited
Over the several years that we've been writing this column, a topic that we've revisited from time to time is how best to provide for backup for small branch offices and/or telecommuters. At one time, ISDN was recommended since it was a dial service that was relatively widely available. Of course, with the limited bandwidth of a Basic Rate Interface (BRI) connection at a maximum of 128Kbps, this option today is not much more attractive than dusting off the old 212a modem. More..

10 great Wi-Fi gadgets for work and play
You've done the hard work of optimizing your Wi-Fi network, and it reliably beams high-speed data to every nook and cranny of your home or office. Now, it's time to take it to the next level by connecting more than just computers. More..

Storage appliance aimed at high-profile customers
Storage startup Ocarina Networks has upgraded its data de-duplication appliance to further reduce wasted disk space, and is now targeting the product at a wider number of industries More..

Ellison pitches high-speed data warehouse server
Oracle saved the biggest news for last at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. CEO Larry Ellison took the stage Wednesday afternoon to announce two hardware products developed with Hewlett-Packard that are designed to provide very high performance for data warehousing applications. More..

Buffalo LinkStation drive goes 'eco'
Buffalo Technology's aged-looking LinkStation Live NAS drives have been given a trendy facelift, adding 'green' features the company hopes will appeal to the power-frugal. More..

Microsoft inks consumer technology patent deal with Pioneer
Microsoft and Pioneer on Tuesday signed a cross-licensing agreement that covers a range of consumer and automotive products, including Microsoft software and Pioneer's TVs and auto navigation units, the companies said. More..

Cisco accelerates broadening of data center role with host of new products
Cisco this week launched several products designed to expand the capabilities of its switches and routers in further virtualizing data center systems and processes. More..

HP takes Google model to heart in new storage system
Hewlett-Packard is getting ready to launch the ExDS storage system, which will use up to 820 1T-byte drives for file-based storage, packaged in two 42U cabinets. More..

10 things seen and heard at VMworld
10 quick-hit observations from VMware’s annual conference. More..

September's coolest gadgets
When it comes to new gadgets there's nothing better than a product that breaks ground in a market sector or does something genuinely new. This month we're got examples of both: Sony's latest LCD (liquid crystal display) that's less than a centimeter thick and the first digital still camera to bridge the gap between compact point-and-shoot models and bulkier SLRs (single lens reflex) with interchangeable lenses. More..

Riverbed to boost storage efficiency
Riverbed plans to use some of its WAN optimization technology to free up space in existing data-storage systems and as a side effect speed up applications and servers that have to handle the data. (Learn more about WAN optimization.) More..

Indian IT market will be $110B by 2012, Gartner says
India's IT spending will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.8 percent to US$110 billion by 2012, according to Gartner. Most of that spending will be on telecommunications services and equipment which is expected to reach $82 billion [b] by 2012. More..

ParaScale dives into the cloud storage arena
ParaScale launched its cloud storage product this week intended to address the content and archival storage markets. The company will allow private enterprises to build cloud storage within the firewall for archival or streaming media or public clouds for service providers, which would compete with Amazon S3 and Nirvanix, among others. More..

Start-up ParaScale launches cloud storage beta trial
Storage start-up ParaScale is opening a beta trial for software that will let IT shops build internal storage “clouds” and give service providers the ability to build cloud storage services similar to Amazon’s S3. More..