Paul Shread

The theme of this week’s Storage Networking World show seems to match the economic backdrop: doing more with less, or in this case getting more capacity or performance out of data storage systems. Data deduplication, 6Gb/s SAS, FCoE, virtualization, automation, optimization and energy cost savings seem to be the buzzwords most bandied about in product […]

Brocade Communications (NASDAQ: BRCD) sees 16 Gigabit per second Fibre Channel coming — even as some data storage industry pundits say Fibre Channel over Ethernet could replace Fibre Channel (see Predicting the Future of Storage Technology). Marty Lans, Brocade’s senior director of product marketing, said the company sees 16Gbps Fibre Channel arriving late next year, […]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting tonight that merger talks between Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have collapsed, placing the potential $7 billion deal in jeopardy. The WSJ reported that Sun officials felt that IBM’s offer of $9.40 a share or less was too low and that IBM had too much leeway […]

Zetta hopes to change the data storage landscape with what it claims is the first cloud offering for primary storage. Zetta Enterprise Cloud Storage is aimed at the unstructured data that makes up the bulk of enterprise data, rather than database applications that demand real-time performance — although Zetta CEO and co-founder Jeff Treuhaft thinks […]

IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) acquisition of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) could be announced Monday, according to news reports — and antitrust issues could be a big factor in getting the deal completed (see Sun Lays Off 1,500 as IBM Merger Looms and Sun Launches ‘Open Cloud’ as Merger Rumors Swirl). The Wall Street Journal and other […]

EMC (NYSE: EMC) today unveiled a new e-mail and instant messaging archiving platform that the company is positioning for a new era of e-discovery and regulatory compliance. The new data archiving architecture, SourceOne, replaces the company’s EmailXtender platform. Future versions of the new platform will focus on Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) SharePoint, file archiving, enterprise applications […]

The data storage market appears to be getting hit harder than expected by the sharp economic downturn, according to a number of recent analyst reports. IDC said earlier this week that it expects worldwide external disk storage systems sales to decline 3.1 percent this year and capacity to grow 44 percent, both well below the […]

Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) is moving ahead with plans to lay off as much as 18 percent of its workforce, even as rumors persist that the company could be acquired by IBM (NYSE: IBM). Sun spokesperson Dana Lengkeek said layoff notifications were given to 1,500 employees this week, on top of 1,300 in January. That […]

QLogic (NASDAQ: QLGC) sees Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) products arriving on the data storage market in the next six to nine months — and claims it’s a year ahead of its competitors in helping develop them. QLogic today unveiled a single-chip FCoE converged network adapter (CNA) that the company says has been sampling since […]

EMC (NYSE: EMC) came to the aid of data deduplication partner Quantum (NYSE: QTM) today with $100 million in financing. Quantum said it will use the money to refinance its convertible debt to “address a key challenge posed by its current capital structure and the very constrained credit environment.” The company was facing a February […]

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is sprucing up its data storage product line with new solid state drives (SSDs) and the latest unified storage array from EMC (NYSE: EMC). The new solid state drives are part of a major upgrade of Dell’s EqualLogic iSCSI storage line, which the company acquired a year ago. The flash drives are […]

Solid state drives (SSDs) are one of the hottest trends in data storage, offering users hitherto unattainable performance for critical applications. But the pricey drives are no place to store data that isn’t being frequently accessed, a problem that Compellent Technologies (NYSE: CML) says it has solved with a new tiered storage, or ILM, feature. […]