Paul Shread

Data storage giant EMC (NYSE: EMC) is facing a federal investigation and lawsuit over its pricing and contract practices, according to documents released yesterday. EMC revealed the U.S. Justice Department investigation in its annual report filed with the SEC yesterday, and the Justice Department announced that it has intervened in a lawsuit against EMC. The […]

Data Domain (NASDAQ: DDUP) is giving users of its data storage de-duplicationtechnology a free upgrade in the form of a new operating system. The new OS can speed data backup throughput of the company’s dedupe appliances by 50 percent to 100 percent, Data Domain claims. “All they have to do is move to the new […]

The much-hyped market for online data storage appears to be winnowing, and a few high-profile names are among the casualties. HP (NYSE: HPQ) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) have notified users that they will be shutting down their online data backup services at the end of the month, following the closure of AOL’s XDrive service in […]

Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) is turning over object-based storage (OSD) development for its SAM-QFS file system to the OpenSolaris community, dealing a setback to a standard that advocates see as the future of data storage technology. Sun will continue to pursue internal object storage development for the block-based ZFS and object-based Lustre file systems and […]

EMC (NYSE: EMC) has added primary data de-duplicationto its best-selling Celerra unified storage arrays, turning its rivalry with NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) up another notch. EMC’s Celerra line, which combines NAS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity, posted more than 40 percent growth last year, well above the company’s Symmetrix and Clariion SAN sales. The storage giant […]

Let’s face it, in these tough economic times, what could play better than a low-cost backup offering based on open source technologies? That’s what Zmanda is hoping as it rolls out new cloud and enterprise data backup and recovery offerings. The company this week unveiled Zmanda Cloud Backup, an online backup and disaster recovery offering […]

Far from being less complicated, the data encryption key management picture got a little cloudier today when Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) released its own key management protocol. Sun announced that it is open sourcing its encryption key management technology. The “generic communication protocol between a key manager and an encrypting device” is the latest effort […]

Seven IT vendors have banded together to propose an encryption key management standard, an important step toward a more comprehensive data security approach (see Storage Security Is More than Just Key Management). Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD), HP (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), LSI (NYSE: LSI), EMC’s (NYSE: EMC) RSA Security Division, Seagate (NYSE: STX) and Thales […]

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) has long been rumored to be interested in acquiring EMC (NYSE: EMC). Now the networking giant may have narrowed its interest, according to reports. Reuters reported earlier this week that Cisco’s pursuit of VMware (NYSE: VMW), which is 84 percent owned by EMC, “could be more serious than many on Wall […]

The slowing economy took a bigger than expected bite out of NetApp’s (NASDAQ: NTAP) quarterly sales, the latest evidence that the data storage market isn’t immune to the worst recession in decades (see EMC Braces for Tough Storage Market). NetApp’s January quarter sales were down 16 percent from the year-ago quarter to $746 million, but […]

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will unveil a new service next week that will sync data between mobile phones and the Web, including backing up and restoring phone information. Microsoft’s My Phone service will be discussed in greater detail at next week’s World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain, but the software giant has posted some initial details […]

Solid state storage startup Fusion-io has added one of the biggest names in technology to its management team: Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak. Wozniak, already a member of Fusion-io’s advisory board, told the New York Times that he signed on as Chief Scientist because “I like the people and the product, and said I […]