Paul Shread

According to two new reports, storage security is a big concern for IT managers — and for good reason. In a Web poll released Monday, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) found that data protection and security are the biggest challenges for IT professionals involved in managing storage networks for their organizations. Nearly one-third of […]

Xiotech, the largest privately-held storage company, has abandoned its proprietary platforms in favor of industry-standard and open source technologies. The company, a 9-year-old Seagate spin-off that generates about $100 million in annual revenues and boasts nearly 1,400 customers, announced its first product this week in a new direction: the Magnitude 3D 3000, which uses Intel […]

Analysts expect 2005 to be a banner year for storage vendors, thanks in part to data protection and retention regulations. Analysts from Robert W. Baird and Info-Tech Research Group released reports today detailing expectations for strong storage spending this year. The Baird analysts — Daniel Renouard, Frank Timons and Joel Inman — released a survey […]

IT executives faced with the need for “more and more storage” are turning to other strategies to control rising storage demands, according to a new report from Summit Strategies. “Instead of constantly investing in new storage equipment, IT executives are now focusing on getting maximum use out of the equipment already in-house,” analyst Joe Clabby […]

Microsoft plans to release version 2.0 of its iSCSI initiator next month, and the software giant has added features that could make Windows-based IP storage more attractive for high-end users. Microsoft announced this week that version 2.0 of the Microsoft Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) Software Initiator is ready to be released to manufacturing […]

IBM will launch new services next month to help businesses backup and retrieve critical data for faster recovery from a disaster or outage. IBM’s new Electronic Data Management Services employ online, disk-based storage and retrieval systems as an alternative to the tape-based systems that have dominated corporate backup processes for decades. The services integrate backup, […]

Network file virtualization specialist Rainfinity has announced support for EMC’s network attached storage products, and EMC in turn will resell Rainfinity’s RainStorage platform. RainStorage 4.5 can now be used with EMC’s NAS products, including EMC Celerra, EMC Celerra NS Series gateways, and EMC NetWin Windows-based file servers. RainStorage is a suite of applications that dynamically […]

The storage software market capped a strong 2004 with 15% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter, driven by data protection and compliance demands, according to IDC. The storage software market grew more than $1 billion last year to $7.9 billion, a 16.1% growth rate, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker. “The storage software […]

Pricing pressures, vendor competition and cautious buying decisions will limit storage revenue growth to single-digit percentages from 2005 through 2007, according to Gartner Dataquest’s Global RAID Disk Storage Forecast, 2004-2007. Gartner lowered its 2005-2006 external controller-based disk storage forecast from last August after “concerns about a soft second half of 2004 proved to be accurate,” […]

The most striking aspect of IDC’s latest quarterly disk storage systems report is the gap between revenue growth and growth in petabytes shipped. Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew slightly in the final quarter of 2004, posting 1% growth over the fourth quarter of 2003, to $3.8 billion, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly […]

Bank of America’s admission on Friday that the company lost data tapes containing federal workers’ customer and account information will likely bring renewed attention to data security issues. The bank confirmed that “a small number of computer data tapes were lost during shipment to a backup data center. The missing tapes contained U.S. federal government […]

They’ve been talked about and written about for years. Standards groups have fussed over every last detail, industry associations have sponsored endless interoperability demos, and vendors have jockeyed for position with competing prototype announcements. Now the products are actually starting to hit the market. We’re talking about new storage technologies such as 4 gigabit per […]