HP chief to reveal strategy on March 14

Hewlett-Packard has invited journalists to an event March 14 where CEO Léo Apotheker is expected to lay out his plans for the company, including anticipated greater investments in enterprise software.

HP sent the invitations on Monday for its "March summit meeting" in San Francisco. It didn't provide details but the event is likely to be a forum for the recently appointed CEO to reveal his strategy for HP.

Hurd did a lot to cut costs at HP and improve its financial position, but he didn't build a strategy that distinguishes HP from big rivals like IBM, said analyst James Staten of Forrester Research. "That's what they're expecting Leo to do for them," he said.

Given Apotheker's experience at SAP, Staten and other analysts expect his plans to involve bigger investments in software for the enterprise, including potentially some big acquisitions. Apotheker indicated as much on HP's earning call.

"The management software they have -- Mercury and Opsware and the legacy HP software -- needs to become a far more integrated and significant part of the business," Staten said.

Analysts say business intelligence  may also be a target area. Right now, HP is like a "BI sandwich without the middle," Forrester analyst James Kobielus said recently. "They've got the hardware, they've got the services, but they don't have the software."

His plan may also include new duties for top HP executives including Ann Livermore, who runs HP's enterprise business, and executive vice presidents David Donatelli and Tom Hogan, the Journal reported.

HP didn't return a call Monday seeking comments for this article.

It's been a bumpy time for the company since Hurd's departure. As soon as it named Apother to be its new CEO, oracle tried to make him appear in court in connection with its intellectual property lawsuit against his former employer, SAP.

Apotheker avoided a court appearance -- and faced no charges in the case -- but the events appeared to force him to keep a low profile while the Oracle-SAP case was ongoing. HP said at the time he was busy traveling the world getting to know its customers and employees.

"Hopefully, Ellison has finished chasing him around with a subpoena and HP can put the CEO follies behind them," said analyst Dan Olds of Gabriel Consulting.

HP also has a separate big event scheduled for Feb 9, also in San Francisco, where it's due to discuss its strategy for the webOS software it bought from Palm to use in smartphones printers and other products.

Cisco adds Mozy cloud service to desktop Smart Storage box

Cisco Systems today unveiled a cloud storage feature for its series of entry-level desktop NSS 300 Series Smart Storage storage arrays.

The Mozy hosted backup service, which has been added to the array's management software, is designed to let users set up automatic cloud-based backups, said David Tucker, vice president of Cisco's small business technology group.

"The Mozy feature allows you to specify the files you want backed up to the cloud on a daily basis, so it can be very painless for the customer," Tucker said. "Let's say I've got files critical for my business and want to make sure I go one step further than on-site backup. This allows you to do that."

Cisco launched the NSS 300 SERIES SMART STORAGE arrays, its first desktop storage offering, last year. The arrays consist of two-bay, four-bay and six-bay desktop network storage boxes with up to 12TB of capacity based on 2TB SATA drives.

The NSS 300 line supports file sharing and backup for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. It can be set up in a variety of RAID configurations including RAID 0, 1, 5 and 6 (dual-disk drive failure resiliency).

Retail pricing of the arrays, which can be configured as network-attached storage (NAS) or as iSCSI target devices, ranges from $913 to $5,625, depending on capacity and functionality.

Mozy online backup service plans start at $145 for 25GB for one year.

Hitachi ships first 3TB enterprise-class SATA hard drive

Hitachi GST today announced the first 3TB enterprise-class hard disk drive, the Ultrastar 7K3000, a 7,200rpm drive that comes with either 6Gbit/sec. serial SCSI (SAS) and serial ATA (SATA) interfaces.

Like its predecessor -- the 3.5-in A7K2000 -- the new drive has five platters, but it increases the areal density on those disks by 50%, from 400GB per platter to 600GB. More important for enterprise-class users, the Ultrastar 7K3000 has a guaranteed meantime between failure of 2 million hours, and the SAS version is dual ported for resiliency.

"Serial ATA drives typically have 1.2 million hour MTBFs. And typically, high-performance drives have higher reliability, but they also have a higher price," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST. "In looking at quality reports from our customers ... we realized we were blowing away our own [specifications]. In the field we were meeting 2 million to 3 million MTBF."

The ability to guarantee 40% more usable life than drives that have 1.2 million MTBF ratings means data centers can reduce their overall total cost of ownership for servers and arrays using the hardware, Collins said.

"We're guaranteeing it," Collins said.

The drive also sports 32% lower watts used per gigabyte of capacity compared with its predecessor and it comes with native data encryption.

The new Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 family also comes in a 2TB offering, and it is now shipping with a 6Gb/s SATA interface worldwide. The Ultrastar 7K3000 SAS family will be available in mid-2011.

Hitachi said it will allow equipment manufacturers to decide on user pricing.

DRAM demand, memory-chip prices set to rise in Q2

Taiwan’s largest computer memory chipmaker on Tuesday forecast a jump in demand for its components in the second quarter of the year as orders from contract computer manufacturers pick up, heralding an all-but-certain DRAM price hikes.

Powerchip Semiconductor Chairman Frank Huang said that between April and June demand for DRAM -- dynamic random-access memory -- would exceed supply, Taiwan's Economic Daily News reported.

"Based on what our OEM clients tell us, we would forecast second-quarter growth,” said Powerchip spokesman Eric Tang. “But the picture is changing very fast, so we don’t have any solid figures yet.”

If memory chip prices rise, computer prices would follow, analysts say. Earlier in the month, prices for commodity 1Gb DDR3 DRAM chips fell to a one-year low, close to their cheapest ever, due to post-holiday oversupply.

PC makers typically spend about 10%, or $20 to $36, of a PC's total manufacturing cost on DRAM. Lower DRAM prices sometimes motivate PC manufacturers to cut prices or to offer improved performance for the same price by adding more memory, the amount of which is key to the overall performance of a computer.

Prices had dropped to an average of 84 cents per unit from around $2.80 in April and May last year, according to the Taipei-based trading platform DRAMeXchange. But they are due to rise 20% to 25% in the second quarter "mainly because of an increase in content per box, stock inventory, and overall demand," it said in a statement on Tuesday.

"We think the prices are pretty much at the lower end, because prices are almost at the cash cost and very close to the lowest point of last price decline," the statement said.

Powerchip, with an annual capacity of 130,000 wafers, shares the world DRAM market with other major players such as Elpida Memory, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.

EMC profit, revenue soar on storage and VMware

Surging revenue from storage, security and virtualization brought record financial results at EMC in the fourth quarter, the company reported Tuesday.

The VMware business led in emc's revenue gains, while the company's RSA securitydivision posted a 28% revenue gain for the quarter. In EMC's core storagebusiness, the midtier product lines, including Clariion, Celerra and Data Domain, saw the greatest sales growth at 23%. The high-end Symmetrix portfolio had sales up 19%.

EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci attributed the strong results to overall trends in IT, including the rapid growth in data storage requirements.

Revenue in the U.S., which represented just over half of the company's business, grew 20% in the quarter. Growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa was slower at 16%, while the Asia-Pacific and Japan region increased 30%. Latin American revenue rose 34%.

The company's reported profit of 42 cents per share, not counting one-time items, slightly exceeded the 41 cents consensus estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. The company also beat analysts' revenue estimate of $4.78 billion.

Full-year consolidated revenue for 2010 also reached a record, rising 21% from 2009 to hit $17 billion. Earnings per share for the year were 88 cents.

For 2011, EMC said it expects revenue of $19.6 billion and earnings per share of $1.07.

TomorrowNow litigation drags SAP Q4 profits down

SAP saw revenue rise 27 percent in the fourth quarter but profits dropped by more than a third due to increased provisions linked to litigation with Oracle related to its former TomorrowNow unit, the company said Wednesday.

On Wednesday, SAP said it intends to fight the damages and laid out a course of action.

"SAP has great respect for the US legal system and Court decisions. However, SAP believes that the amount awarded by the jury in Oracle v. SAP/TomorrowNow is disproportionate and wrong," the company said.

"After the Court has entered final judgment SAP intends to file post-trial motions in the coming weeks asking the Court to reduce the amount of damages awarded, or to order a new trial," it said.

It warned the amount by which the jury award would be reduced, if any, cannot be predicted, so legal provisions assumed in Wednesday's earnings statement could change.

Revenue in quarter ended Dec. 31 was €4 billion (US$5.3 billion at the exchange rate on the last day of the quarter), while net profit was €437 million. The results are calculated to international financial reporting standards and include the operations of Sybase after it was acquired by SAP on July 26 last year.

SAP expressed confidence for the coming year and said it performed extremely well in all key customer segments, and showed solid revenue worldwide, particularly in fast-growing emerging markets.

Software revenue in the fourth quarter was €1.51 billion, an increase of 35 percent over the same quarter in the previous year. Software and software-related service revenue was €3.27 billion, an increase of 28 percent.

Software revenue grew for the full year to €3.27 billion up by 25 percent, while software and software-related service revenue was €9.8 billion, an increase of 19 percent over the previous year. Full year revenue at €12.5 billion was up by 17 percent over the previous year, while net profit was €1.8 billion, up 4 percent.

Intel offers free software stack for Fibre Channel Over Ethernet

Intel has eased the migration to a single network infrastructure throughout data centers by introducing Open FCOE, a free software stack for Fibre Channel Over Ethernet.

The software stack had been in testing and development for some time, but on Thursday it was formally introduced after being qualified for Microsoft Windows, Red Hat and SUSE Linux, and EMC and NetApp storage platforms. It has also been qualified for use with Cisco Systems and Brocade Communications switches. Open FCOE is being offered as a free upgrade to the Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet Server Adapter X520 family, the company announced at a press event in San Francisco.

FCOE is an advanced form of Ethernet that is designed to bring the reliability of traditional Fibre Channel to the nearly ubiquitous infrastructure of Ethernet. Fibre Channel remains the connection to many enterprise storage platforms even as Ethernet forms the foundation of both LANs and other storage technologies, such as NAS (network-attached storage) and iSCSI (Internet SCSI). With Ethernet providing both computing and storage connections, IT departments can have more flexibility to provision and modify their data centers, according to backers of the so-called unified fabric.

One of those backers is Cisco, which has been shipping FCOE products since June 2008. Last year,  Open FCOE will be available to all its 10-Gigabit Ethernet customers, said Soni Jiandani, vice president of marketing for Cisco's Server Access Virtualization Business Unit.

"Customers will no longer have to differentiate between, 'Can I mount storage on my servers that supports NAS, ISCSI, or Fibre Channel?' It brings forth the notion of, 'Wire once, and mount any type of storage on your computing infrastructure,'" Jiandani said. This type of flexibility is key to making the most of computing and storage virtualization, she said.

By providing its Open FCOE stack to operating system vendors, Intel is making it possible to place most of the processing for FCOE connections on servers CPUs instead of specialized processors on the adapters. This keeps the door open to performance improvements in the future as Intel's server processors get faster, said Tom Swinford, vice president and general manager of the data center group in Intel's LAN Access Division. In tests, the CPU load from Open FCOE processing never exceeded 5%, Swinford said.

EMC has qualified the Open FCOE software for use with its EMC Symmetrix VMAX and EMC VNX storage platforms. EMC has been working for years with Intel, OS providers and switch vendors to harden the FCOE software and make sure it works with many Intel-based servers and with other network components, said Paul Brown, vice president and general manager of EMC's storage networking business.

Knitlogix To Distribute Dot Hill Storage Solutions In India

Dot Hill Systems, a provider of storage solutions and software for OEMs, open storage partners and system integrators, has announced a new distribution agreement with Hyderabad-based technology integrator Knitlogix.

Under the terms of the agreement, Knitlogix will market, integrate and support the entire line of Dot Hill 3000 and 2002 storage arrays throughout India.

Dot Hill 3000 and 2002 Series storage solutions are easily customized by partners and customers to meet varying performance, capacity, and other specific business requirements. Its next-generation 3000 Series RAID arrays support 8Gb Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs), dual interface 8Gb Fibre Channel/1Gb iSCSI and 6Gb JBODs, and feature optional Dot Hill AssuredRemote data management software for remote replication. Advanced data management such as AssuredCopy, Dot Hill's volume copy technology, enables the creation of data volume copies for additional data protection, and Dot Hill's AssuredSnap snapshot capability for improved data availability and business continuity, allows organizations to reduce the burden of meeting modern data retention policies.

The arrays are equipped with a number of energy-saving features including Dot Hill's patented EcoStor green battery-free alternative for cache memory, drive spin-down and DC power options. The storage solutions scale to support up to 144 SAS, near-line SAS, SSD and SATA disk drives, totaling up to 192TB of capacity based on today’s 2TB disk drive capacities, and feature a 2U 12 or 24-drive rack-mount footprint.

Raritan Power IQ 2.0 Helps Data Center Conserve Energy

Raritan recently introduced Power IQ energy management software that helps data center and lab managers to better understand environmental conditions at the rack in order to use power and cooling resources optimally without compromising performance.

 

Power IQ 2.0 provides Thermal Analytics for monitoring rack temperatures based on industry guidelines, including ASHRAE (American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air- Conditioning Engineers). It provides a comprehensive solution to: inform users if a data center or lab is within these recommendations and how much energy could be saved by increasing temperature to meet these new recommendations; alert users if temperature exceeds threshold conditions; and, provide long-term trend charts. The solution also enables graceful shut down of underutilized Windows and Linux servers.

Power IQ 2.0's unique agent-less approach enables shut downs and start ups of servers connected to any rack power distribution units (PDUs). It does not require additional software to be loaded on the target server and leverages standard operation system scripts and commands. Energy can be saved by scheduling automatic power cycling of an IT device group when not needed.

"Data center and lab managers are having difficulty keeping up with the increasing demand for power. Customers tell me they are running out of power and need a way to manage this resource more efficiently,” said Sanjay Motwani, Regional Manager India and Middle East, Raritan. "Power IQ provides them a comprehensive solution to obtain the most out of their existing power supply and infrastructure. Power IQ provides the information and control to be more energy efficient and find stranded power capacity in areas, such as over cooling and running underutilized servers."

Interop 2010: No Alternative To Setting Up Private Clouds

In the first key note address of the second day of Interop Mumbai 2010—titled Journey to the private cloud- now or never—Manoj Chugh, President, India and Saarc, and Director, Strategic Account, Asia-Pacific and Japan, EMC, advised CIOs that there’s no alternative to setting up private clouds.

“You may not be aware of it, but you are already on the journey to the private cloud,” said Chugh. “Information is expected to grow 60 times over the next 10 years in your organization. However, I doubt whether your IT budgets will grow manifold. CFOs are becoming tech savvy, and are expecting faster ROIs and seeking reports on asset utilization. CIOs are under pressure to show better utilization of IT assets, and legacy architectures will not help them,” he added.

Chugh unveiled nuances of a report on information growth in enterprises to the audience comprising leading consultants and CIOs. “Any organization which has implemented virtualization or has set up a networked storage will soon consider private clouds. With cloud computing you will see that your present IT asset utilization scale faster, and with better ROIs,” Chugh explained.

Chugh polled CIOs in the audience on IT asset utilization. The informal dip stick survey revealed that most CIOs feel IT utilization will be between 10 to 35 percent.

He stressed that cloud computing is no more a hyperware, and is real. "There's a debate on private and public clouds, and the way we see we feel that enterprises will end up using a hybrid mix."

Interop 2010: New Approaches To Data Center In Enterprises

With rising electricity bills and storage costs increasing 50 percent year-on-year, the current industry approach of having point solutions with different hardware, software and processes will not address concerns of a CIO. Speakers threw open the session on open source, conducted on the third and the final day of Interop Mumbai 2010, with this interesting information.

While speaking on how to improve the bottom line with unified storage, Surajit Sen, Director, Channels, Marketing and Alliances, NetApp India, offered, “Storage is a big cost challenge. And with de-duplication, thin provisioning, thin replication, virtual clones and double party RAID storage managers can boost efficiency of their existing setups, and reduce storage spending.”

Sharing case studies, he said that NetApp products increase the data storage capacity by as much as three times using such features. 

Founded in 2005, Elliptical offers a unique product: self-contained racks with cooling, active-passive fire separation and cyber lock encryption. Likening them to a fridge, Sharad Srivastava, Country Manager, Elliptical, said, “Almost 73 percent of cooling efficiency is wasted in a traditional data center. Instead of a big room, one 19-inch rack that can fit in vendor neutral blade servers and can be relocated at will is now available.” He was talking on transforming IT with micro-modular data centers at Interop.

“The next generation of employees are bringing their apps into the enterprise and virtualized network infrastructure that is tightly coupled with platforms will be necessary to engage them,” said Ullal Bajaj, Director, Data, Avaya Asia-Pacific, speaking on new data center approaches. He added that Avaya’s Flare and the announcement of interoperability between VoIP service Skype and Avaya Unified Communication are steps in that direction.

“The shortest path bridging virtualized environments to create a flat network will drive operational savings for next generation virtualization,” Bajaj added.

Gartner: 80 percent of new large data centers to report PUE readings by 2015

As companies emerge from recession, data center power is set to become the fastest-rising cost. Experts will take to measuring efficiency by using power utilization efficiency (PUE) to get a comprehensive, accurate and real-time record of the energy used in data centers. By 2015, 80 percent of new large data centers will report continuous PUE readings across data centers according to analyst firm Gartner.

"With upwards of five percent growth for server shipments predicted per year over the next two years, organizations need to forcefully control their energy consumption and costs. To do this, data center operators need to measure energy-related data across the whole site, including the building, the facility's components and the IT equipment portfolio. Despite wide availability of measurement tools, experts and consultants on the topic, operators struggle with the best place to measure the energy in their data centers. What is needed is a pragmatic approach that will provide sufficient information for most operational planning purposes," said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner.

Users need to measure across six areas: building, electrical facilities, building facilities, racks, IT hardware and virtual machines (VMs). By measuring across these areas, data center operators can obtain a detailed, comprehensive and, in most cases, a real-time usage picture of the energy that is being consumed across the whole site.

"Energy management across IT hardware, racks and electrical facilities should be tackled immediately, while measurements across data center building facilities and buildings will be necessary mainly for hosting providers that want to charge customers specifically for energy usage. Measurement across VMs will happen during the next four or more years, becoming relevant when users want to examine the energy associated with a workload and when that workload is running in a separate VM," said Kumar.

Data center power, cooling and energy supply issues are going to worsen in the next few years with organizations amassing technology infrastructure, according to Gartner, which puts energy-related costs as approximately 12 percent of overall data center expenditure.

Net4’s new Virtual Private Server

Net4 India has announced a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting solution for enterprises a web and application hosting service offered as an alternative to owning private servers.

“VPS is targeted at businesses looking to expand without having to deal with infrastructural upgrades and investments. The solution allows customers to share the expense of hardware components such as storage, processor RAM and multi-redundant network connects, while retaining control of their virtualized servers,” said Jasjit Sawhney, Chairman, Net4 India.

VPS is priced at `5,999 per month for 60GB of disk space, dedicated IP addresses and 2GB of RAM, with the option of Windows or Linux OS.

“With its committed server resources, VPS will offer each virtual platform the power of a dedicated server. SMBs and large enterprises interested in VPS solutions are encouraged to contact our VPS experts for a free technical consultation to overcome technological barriers,” added Sawhney.

Cisco Upgrades And Virtualizes Its Borderless Network Architecture

Cisco has announced a comprehensive upgrade of products and services under its Borderless Network architecture with a focus on virtualization.

A key element of the new architecture is Application Velocity, which will offer a boost in performance, virtualization and application-aware networking. The company believes it is a critical need for organizations looking to adopt cloud computing.

“In India, we expect App Velocity to be extremely popular because of heavy broadband congestion here. We are bullish about the virtualized desktop market and are targeting engineering, financial and real estate sectors,” said Marie Hattar, CMO, Cisco, at the pre-launch media discussion.

App Velocity is not a new concept at Cisco, which offers layer 4 or TCP application optimization but this has now been embedded in the integrated services routers.

Cisco has upgraded its ASR series of compact routers. The new router ASR 1001 has an option to double its performance on-demand from 2.5GBps to 5GBps. It has also added a new small form-factor security appliance to its Adaptive Security Appliance line. The ASA 5585-X combines an intrusion-prevention system with a firewall and VPN support via AnyConnect 3.0. Other launches include the Catalyst 4500E switch and a 802.11n wireless access point called Aironet 1040 introduced at entry-level pricing to target small enterprises.

In the WAN optimization space, Cisco introduced WAAS Express, an on-demand service with layer-4 optimization for small and remote branch offices; and WAAS for Services Ready Engine (SRE) modules with layer 4-7 optimization.

The company introduced UCS Express, a cut-down version of its Unified Computing System for branch offices.

On the services front, Cisco has enhanced its portfolio with the launch of LAN Management Solution 4.0, Smart Net Total Care and Smart Business Architecture (SBA) Enterprise. Smart Net Total Care and LAN Management Solution 4.0 are network monitoring and troubleshooting tools to increase operational efficiency and lower support costs.

SBA Enterprise offers guides to help enterprises create their entire network with the right configuration and hardware combinations. SBA Enterprise will help CIOs dealing with the growing complexity of network infrastructure.

Tata Communications Expands Its Cloud Portfolio

Tata Communications has announced the launch of InstaCompute and InstaOffice to mark the company’s expansion in the cloud space to deliver self-service, pay-as-you-use IT application and data center infrastructure services.

Vinod Kumar, President and COO, Tata Communications, said, “Self-provisioned and completely automated and pay-per-use, InstaCompute allows organizations to manage their businesses in line with growing and fluctuating market demands and rapidly evolving technology. InstaOffice, powered by Google Apps, include email and calendar, instant messaging, voice and video chat, as well as office document applications.”

According to the company, InstaCompute runs on compute and storage infrastructure from Dell.

“InstaOffice strengthens our InstaApps portfolio which already offers InstaCC (contact center), InstaCRM (customer relationship management) and InstaECM (content storage and management),” added Kumar.

Belkin’s Magic Pot Of Sodexo Passes

Belkin India, a provider of interconnectivity solutions across computing and consumer electronic devices, has rolled out of a special offer for its channel partners to add to the festive spirit of Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali. The offer is valid up to December 31, 2010.

Under the scheme titled Magic Pot, channel partners can get Sodexo Gift Passes worth up to `42,000, which can be redeemed for rewards of their choice. The partners get `500 for product whose purchase value is `25,000, `1,100 for `50,000,`2,000 for `80,000, `4,000 for `1,50,000, `9,000 for `3,00,000, `17,000 for `5,00,000,`28,000 for `7,50,000 and `42,000 for `10,00,000, according to an official statement.

Mohit Anand, Managing Director, India Sub continent, said, “This initiative taken is a step towards bringing us closer to our channel partners and capitalize the spike during the upcoming festival buying in India. The launch of this promotion and our offer is designed to celebrate the depth of our relationship with our partners.”

Boston Unveils Server, Storage, Workstation And Hybrid GPUs

At a technology event held in Mumbai recently, Boston IT Solutions announced the launch of their latest range of server, storage, workstation and hybrid GPU compute-based solutions. The products unveiled by the network integration solution company include Supermicro-based Venom 1U 3D workstation; high availability storage appliances, Igloo NXStor; and dedicated rendering solution for 3D graphics, animation and compositing workflows, BOXX Technologies Render Pro.

The new Venom 1U 3D workstation includes two innovative technologies namely hybrid GPU compute and PCoIP technologies.

The workstation provides hybrid compute performance by using Nvidia’s latest Fermi architecture-based Tesla M2050/2070 series GPU compute processors. The implementation of PC-over-IP provides a zero noise workstation solution that can be installed in a server room. The workstations can be centrally managed in a server room or datacenter whilst at the same time providing high resolution full frame rate 3D graphics and HD AV media experience with full USB interoperability.

Boston also demonstrated its Igloo NXStor storage appliance, which has been designed to assure high availability and full controller failover within a single dedicated appliance to ensure maximum system uptime. With up to 32TB of shared SAS 2.0 storage within the same enclosure and cascades of up to 112TB with JBOD expansion within single volume flexibility, the appliance can assure maximum availability of data.

Boston offers bespoke services for specialist applications, which include product design and consultancy. Additional services include on-site warranty and financial solutions including leasing.

HDS Launches New Content Platform For Cloud Storage

Hitachi Data Systems is updating its Hitachi Content Platform and unveiled a new gateway for storing and discovering content on that platform as a way to make it easier for partners to help customers access data as a service or through a cloud.

HDS unveiled version 4 of its Hitachi Content Platform, a system which provides intelligent, content-focused storage of unstructured data using multiple tiers.

Updates to HCP v4 include features to improve scalability, manageability, security, compliance, and replication.

The company also unveiled its new Hitachi Data Ingestor, an on-premise appliance for the storage and recovery of CIFS and NFS data on the HCP v4.

Together, the HCP v4 and the Hitachi Data Ingestor provide an integrated unstructured data solution for customers with remote users who may be in a branch office or outside a cloud, said Tanya Loughlin, Manager, Cloud Product Marketing at HDS.

"It's aimed at distributed environments, including branch and remote offices, or private clouds for companies trying to provide services to such environments, or for service providers who want to deliver such services to their customers in a public cloud," Loughlin said.

Improving scalability, security, and data protection in HCP v4

HCP provides object-oriented storage with metadata wrapped around the storage object to let customers add intelligence to their storage in multitenant environments, Loughlin said.

Such intelligence allows customers to manage and preserve data for long periods of time for legal, compliance, or other business reasons with such services as data integrity checking, RAID 6, replication, encryption, WORM, audit logging, and so on to make sure data remains accessible and in its original form for years.

New for HCP v4 is advanced replication capabilities, including the ability to replicate from many devices to a single HCP or to chain the replication of several units, Loughlin said. Also new is dynamic data protection levels, which Loughlin said allows two units to back each other up for disaster recovery purposes without the requirement that the data on both be the same.

Also new is the ability for HCP to instantly recognize and use new capacity as it is added, she said.

HDS has also increased the manageability of the HPC with a new management API that allows service providers to provide new services such as automated chargeback in multitenant configurations.

More ways to get data in and out

HDS's new Hitachi Data Ingestor is an appliance built specifically for storing NFS or CIFS content on the HCP. It can be used at remote or branch offices or at public cloud locations, Loughlin said.

The Hitachi Data Ingestor ships in two-node clusters for high availability, and provides such management features as chargebacks and quota management. It also provides a local cache of frequently-accessed data for fast retrieval, she said.

The Ingestor is good for multitenant environments, Loughlin said. "Each tenant has their own file system, and each client has their own namespace," she said. "So one user cannot access information from another tenant or user."

Both products are currently available. 

Dell Power Portfolio To Target Technology Refresh Among SMBs

Dell India has launched its PowerEdge servers, PowerVault storage, and PowerConnect networking solutions to help SMBs retire their aging IT infrastructure and invest in scalable and easy to migrate and integrate platform. It also announced the global availability of OEM Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 that helps customers consolidate servers, proactively monitor systems, and manage hardware, software and services through a unified console.

Satyen Vyas, Director, Advanced Systems Group, SMB, Dell India, said, “The economy still continues to be challenging, but businesses are finding they can no longer postpone technology updates. As they look to make investments, customers are telling us they are concerned about business continuity and data protection, with return on investment being a more important consideration than price. The products we have launched are specifically designed to address those needs.”

Under PowerEdge Dell is expanding its AMD portfolio by offering two new servers aimed at bringing enterprise-class features at SMB afforable pricing. PowerEdge R415 is a 2-socket, 1U server feeaturing Opteron 4100 processor, while PowerEdge R515 is a 2-socket, 2U server for customers looking to consolidate their infrastructure, improve server efficiency and availability, and promote consolidation through virtualization.

The new servers include enterprise-class features such as Dell Server Deployment Pack, Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager, and Lifecycle Controller.

The R415 and R515 also offer full redundancy in power supplies, and hot-swap hard drives that provide important availability options for better business data protection. Additional advanced features include the interactive LCD screen for easy system monitoring and Energy Smart technologies.

With the PowerVault NX200 NAs sports an Intel processor and enable client PC backups and retrieval of large files. NX200 features 2GB of RAM where comparable systems offer only 512MB, providing an additional performance boost for data access, storage and retrieval. It comes with an automated installation wizardthat allows installation in under 15 minutes, according to Dell.

Designed for up to 50 physical and virtual server operating system instances and 500 client devices, Microsoft System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010 provides management for virtualized and non-virtualized servers in Microsoft Hyper-V environments. The SCE solution assesses the physical environment and determines whether non-virtualized servers should be virtualized. If a server does encounter a hardware alert, the Dell Server PRO Management Pack with PRO Tips recommends a remedial action such as live migration of VMs to enable optimal management of virtual resources. Dell OEM Microsoft System Center Essentials Console Management Suite licenses are available with the purchase of most models of Dell PowerEdge servers.

Intel To Bundle Symantec Backup Express With Servers, Motherboards

Intel is distributing Symantec's Backup Exec 2010 data protection software to its system builder partners as part of the Intel Enabled Solutions Acceleration Alliance program.

System builders who purchase an Intel server or server motherboard through any of the vendor's distributors will be able to also purchase Backup Exec 2010 at a competitive price, said David Brown, Director, Marketing for Intel's Enterprise Platform Services division.

Starting next month, system builders will be able to purchase one of nine versions of Backup Exec 2010 with Intel servers and motherboards, including versions for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Small Business Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, and others, Brown said. They are all full versions of the software.

Intel is offering Symantec's Backup Exec 2010 software as a way to provide its system builder partners a one-stop shop for a variety of hardware and software at a discount, Brown said. However, he declined to specify the price, only saying that Intel is offering "competitive pricing."

"I can't promise it will be the cheapest for partners," he said. "It depends on the distributor. But based on our agreement with Symantec, it's a very competitive offering."

Focused on smaller system builders

Symantec's Backup Exec is one of the storage industry's best-selling data protection applications for Windows environments.

Todd Swank, Vice President, Marketing at Nor-Tech, a US-based system builder, said that Intel, by offering such software with its motherboards and systems, shows it is really focused on smaller system builders.

"If you are a smaller system builder, getting good discounts is hard," Swank said. "By negotiating contracts with larger ISVs, Intel helps us compete better with larger server companies like IBM, HP, and Dell."

Intel has offered Symantec anti-virus software in the past to its system builders. However, the vendor recently acquired Symantec competitor McAfee, and has yet to state how it will work with the channel on the security side.

Swank said that the deal with Symantec to resell Backup Express was probably made before Intel's acquisition of McAfee. "These kind of deals take time," he said.