- CustomerVision's wiki gets down to business
- Seagate shipping 750GB Barracuda
- Aberdeen unveils interchangeable SAS/SATA storage solution
- OmniCast for SMS cuts the time needed to distribute updates
- Hitachi offers a diskless NSC
- Postini to start Personal Archive service
- Copan's Revolution to support larger drives
- Uplogix adds service-level savvy to Envoy
- Network Instruments bolsters Observer with NetFlow and sFlow integration
- ISC brings supercomputing to the masses
April 27, 2006 | Comments: (0)
CustomerVision's wiki gets down to business
CustomerVision has launched its BizWiki product this week, saying the time has come to trade in the clogged e-mail in-box for real-time, easy collaboration in the enterprise.
"[People have become]totally bombarded with e-mails," said CustomerVision chief executive Cindy Rockwell.
Companies have also invested in complicated content management systems that are limited for collaboration, she said.
BizWiki fills the "huge functional gap" between the two, giving the enterise an easier way to collaborate, communicate in real-time and capture knowledge along the way, Rockwell said.
The company has been developing its product for two years, giving it time to customize its product to meet business requirements as the trend gathered momentum with technology enthusiasts, she said.
Tim Plimmer, senior VP of operations for Hearst Corporation's Communications Data Services, and a customer, said current content management systems had too many barriers. "CustomerVision BizWiki eliminates the trade off between functionality and ease of use with the necessary usabilitym manageability and extensibility requirements of today's enterprise."
A unique feature is Ask the Expert, which expands communications to one-to-many in seconds, routing questions to subject matter experts when not immediately available in the knowledge bank, CustomerVision says.
Rockwell said the software was already proving successful for cost savings at Fortune 500 financial institutions.
Monthy service range from $100 to $5000 a month and are immediately available.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 27, 2006 04:07 PM
April 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Seagate shipping 750GB Barracuda
Seagate Technology began shipping today the Barracuda 7200.10 a new version of its popular desktop drive that now deploys perpendicular recording.
Barracuda 10 drives have capacity ranging from 200GB to 750GB and offer both parallel and serial ATA connectivity. Drives with 250GB or larger capacity double the onboard cache to 16MB.
Starting on Monday, May 1st Seagate will begin offering Barracuda 10 drives also on external models. A 750GB external drive should sell for about $559.
The company estimates a retail price of $104 for an internal 200GB SATA Barracuda 10 and of $590 for a 750GB SATA model.
Seagate covers the Barracuda 10 with a 5 year warranty.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 26, 2006 06:01 AM
April 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Aberdeen unveils interchangeable SAS/SATA storage solution
Aberdeen has developed a customizable SAS storage server solution that offers hot-swap interchangeability of SATA II and SAS drives.
The Stirling X332 has 16 drive bays and can combine both types of drives in any combination. It offers support for up to 128 hard drives on a single controller, as well as RAID controller redundancy.
The Stirling X332 storage servers are scheduled to begin shipping in late Q2.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 25, 2006 08:44 AM
April 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
OmniCast for SMS cuts the time needed to distribute updates
Stratacache has announced a new version of its content distribution software, OmniCast for SMS2003, which offers simultaneous delivery of updates and patches to Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 distributed servers.
OmniCast can receive, compress, simultaneously distribute, and install SMS updates on every server on a wide area network, providing enormous savings in bandwidth and delivery time. OmniCast for SMS can transfer files to as many as 20,000 distributed servers concurrently.
OmniCast for SMS2003 has job-specific bandwidth controls and scheduling, enabling it to automatically and transparently distribute updates without disrupting other network traffic.
OmniCast for SMS2003 is available immediately.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 25, 2006 08:21 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Hitachi Data Systems announced today that a disk less versions of its TagmaStore Network Storage Controller NSC55 is now available.
The disk less version of the NSC55 targets customers that want to deploy the virtualization features of the unit but have already enough capacity to satisfy their business demands, says Hitachi.
The disk less NSC55 maintains the same architecture of disk-equipped models and can be updated with internal drives when needed.
According to Hitachi, a disk less NSC55 can connect a variety of arrays including other vendors' products to its embedded FC ports, and manage a global capacity of up to 16 petabytes.
Taking advantage of the NSC55 Universal Virtualization Layer software customers can achieve more efficient utilization of existing arrays and add features such as tiered storage management and replication, Hitachi explains.
The disk less NSC55 starts at $90,000 in configurations with 16 FC ports.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 24, 2006 08:16 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Postini to start Personal Archive service
Postini is announcing today Personal Archive, a new service that extends Archive Manager to include storing and retrieving personal messages for selected users.
Archive Manager is an outsourced archiving solution targeting legal and compliance requirement for e-mail and IM messages that the company announced last December.
Personal Archive should be of interest to end users that can maintain a virtually unlimited number of messages on remote repositories hosted by Postini.
The new service should be appreciated also by administrators that can easily keep internal e-mail databases to a manageable size without significantly hampering their users.
According to Postini, archived e-mail messages can be accessed from a browser client and restored locally when necessary. Customers subscribing to Postini Perimeter Manager for IM can obtain similar functionality for their instant messages.
The Personal Archive service is available immediately. Adding Personal Archive should increase the cost of the Postini service, ranging between $90 and $300 per user/year, by about 20 percent.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 24, 2006 08:05 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Copan's Revolution to support larger drives
Copan Systems announced today support for 500 GB SATA drives on its Revolution 200 MAID (massive array of idle disks).
With a structure of up to 8 shelves, each loaded with 8 canisters Revolution arrays can mount up to 896 drives in a single cabinet.
Using 500 GB drives brings the total capacity to 448 terabytes over just 10 square foot, achieving the highest capacity per space ratio in the industry, according to Copan.
"We were also able to lower the acquisition cost [with 500 GB drives] - says Roger Archibald, Copan VP of marketing and business development - "and now in a fully configured system the list price is below $3 per gigabyte".
Configurations of the Revolution 200 with the larger drives are available immediately.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 24, 2006 08:00 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Uplogix adds service-level savvy to Envoy
Uplogix today unveiled Version 2.5 of Envoy and Envoy Management Station (EMS). New to the suite, which provides admins with centralized control and remote automated support of distributed networks, is a Service Level Verification (SLV) module, enhanced reporting and centralized management capabilities, Unix server support, and expanded satellite and GPS device coverage,the company said.
The SLV module lets customers measure the performance of critical network services and applications throughout the enterprise. According to the company, the performance data can be combined with network device-specific data to help admins better pinpoint the source of a problem, which Envoy can automatically diagnose and resolve.
"SLV provides IT staff with the data they need to gain better visibility into perceived performance problems. It also strengthens Envoy’s capabilities to automatically diagnose and resolve remote problems, leading to increased service availability at the network’s edge," said Barry Cox, CEO of Uplogix, based in Austin, Texas.
Also new to Version 2.5, Uplogix has enhanced the EMS reporting engine and interface, the company says. User can schedule reports for e-mail delivery and create customized reports. Also, Uplogix has added a visual editor for configuring management policies and supporting business processes. Users can now schedule reports for email delivery as well as create their own customized reports to better manage their IT infrastructure. A new visual editor has been added for configuring management policies from the EMS and supporting user-defined business processes.
The Envoy also now supports Sun Solaris servers, which allows admins to remotely monitor and manage business-critical servers tied to the network.
Additionally, Uplogix has expanded Envoy's satellite communication device coverage to both ND Satcom’s SkyWan product line and iDirect’s Infiniti and Netmodem series of remote satellite modems. Support for GPS devices is also new to Version 2.5, which can provide positioning information during an outage.
The InfoWorld Test Center reviewed a previous version of the Envoy suite earlier this year.
Posted by Ted Samson on April 24, 2006 06:00 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Network Instruments bolsters Observer with NetFlow and sFlow integration
Network Instruments today revealed a host of enhancements to Observer, the company's flagship network analysis solution.
Among them, Observer offers integration with Cisco NetFlow and HP sFlow data collection. NetFlow, available within most Cisco switches and routers, tracks routed IP traffic through every visible port, and it can deliver high-level application-usage statistics. sFlow, supported by a range of networking and application vendors, offers layer 2 to layer 7 visibilities and provides real-time congestion monitoring, audit trail analysis, and more.
According to Douglas Smith, president and CEO of Minneapolis-based Network Instruments, admins will be able to view the "5,000-foot level" NetFlow and sFlow data from the Observer interface. If a network abnormality is detected, an admin can use Observer to drill down on application performance, review response times, and identify latency.
Also new to Observer is application-analysis support for Citrix, and VoIP analysis support for Avaya and Mitel systems.
Support for NetFlow, sFlow, Citrix Application Analysis, and expanded Avaya and Mitel support is included at no additional cost with Expert Observer, which sells for $2,895.
Posted by Ted Samson on April 24, 2006 01:00 AM
April 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
ISC brings supercomputing to the masses
Interactive Supercomputing (ISC) has announced a new version of its Star-P software platform that lets existing desktop simulation tools operate automatically on high-performance computers.
The new version of Star-P now runs on lower-cost AMD Opteron-based systems, enabling more users to tap the power of parallel computing clusters.
The Star-P interactive parallel computing platform lets scientists and engineers code algorithms and models on their desktops using mathematical software such as MathWorks' Matlab, and run them instantly and interactively on parallel servers without re-programming.
Star-P for SGI’s Opteron-based servers will be available this the summer priced starting at under $8,000.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 21, 2006 08:17 AM
April 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Ektron CMS400.Net gains new Web capabilities
Ektron has released Version 6.0 of CMS400.Net, its all-in-one application for creating, deploying, and managing interactive Web sites.
Version 6.0 boasts new features, such as site analytics, blogging, forums, polls, surveys, and content ratings, aimed at letting organizations develop more interactive sites and Web applications.
In addition, CMS400.Net 6.0 introduces document management support for the open-source office suite OpenOffice.org, and Oracle Database 10g for storing site data.
Ektron CMS400.Net 6.0 is currently available priced starting at $8,640 for a 10-user, one-URL license with one year of maintenance.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 21, 2006 08:12 AM
April 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Eclipse readies Callisto project
The Eclipse Foundation on Wednesday unveiled a release candidate for its Callisto project, which combines 10 technologies into a single release.
The release candidate has all the features of the full platform, but bug fixes are expected between now and the general release planned for June.
"The goal of the Callisto Simultaneous Release is to release 10 major Eclipse projects at the same time," Eclipse said on its Web site. "We are doing this simultaneous release to support the needs of the ecosystem members who integrate Eclipse frameworks into their own software and products."
"Callisto's goal is to eliminate uncertainity about project version numbers, and thus to allow ecosystem members to start their own integration, cross-project, and cross-product testing efforts earlier," Eclipse said.
Each technology in Callisto currently requires a separate download. The Callisto page on Eclipse.com is here.
Included in Callisto are:
* Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project.
* C/C++ IDE.
* Data Tools Platform.
* Eclipse Modeling Framework.
* Graphical Tool Framework.
* Graphical Modeling Framework.
* Eclipse Project.
* Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform Project.
* Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project.
* Visual Editor Project.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 20, 2006 09:40 AM
April 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Congoo offers free gateway to subscription-only Web content
A free downloadable toolbar from Congoo finds premium content that is invisible to most search engines and provides limited access at no cost.
Congoo NetPass, now in beta testing, provides free introductory access to nearly 300 top media sources such as newspapers, professional journals, investment analysts, and wire services.
NetPass' one-click registration enables users to access premium content from participating publishers without having a subscription or repeatedly filling out forms. Users are typically allowed four to 15 articles per month per publisher. No credit card or other payment information is required.
To download the free Congoo NetPassBeta version visit www.congoo.com.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 20, 2006 07:12 AM
April 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Stonefly starts shipping RAID 6
StoneFly, Inc. is announcing today the immediate availability of RAID 6 on some of its products, including its SAN-in-a-box systems, such as the iSC-1620 and iSC-2420 and some configurations of its ValueSAN and OptiSAN modular concentrators.
RAID 6 is a dual parity technology that maximizes fault tolerance by using a second independent distributed parity scheme (dual parity) to withstand multiple simultaneous drive failures, the company explains.
A StoneFly iSC-1620 with 2TB capacity starts at $13,500.
Later this quarter StoneFly will release RAID 6 for more configurations supported by its modular Storage Concentrator line.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 18, 2006 03:32 AM
April 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Seagate's new Cheetah goes perpendicular
Seagate Technology is announcing today a new 15,000 RPM disk drive, the Cheetah 15K.5 featuring capacities of 73 GB, 147 GB and 300 GB delivered over 1, 2 and 4 discs, respectively.
According to Seagate the new drive is the first enterprise class unit to deploy perpendicular recording, a technology that doubles recording density storing bits vertically on the platters.
The new Cheetah can be ordered with Ultra320 SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI, and 4 Gb Fibre Channel connectivity.
The company indicates that the new drive delivers 30 percent faster performance than its predecessor and has a transfer rate of up to 125 MBps.
The new unit is available immediately to OEM customers and should begin shipping to channel customers later this quarters, says Seagate. Pricing was not mentioned in today's announcement.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 18, 2006 03:19 AM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sybase on Monday announced availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 10.5, a version of the company's 4GL rapid application development tool that features improvements to the product's DataWindow technology for data access and presentation.
In version 10.5, DataWindow enables users to build complex reports and forms using autosize height functionality for all bands in a report, not just the main band where data resides, Sybase said. Also, a new presentation style, the TreeView DataWindow, enables hierarchical data to be easily displayed.
New properties in DataWindow make complex data access, manipulation and presentation easier and codeless, according to Sybase.
Also in version 10.5, a rich text control lets users deliver rich text in applications. Additionally, the product offers built-in support for new data types and boosts support for Web services.
The user interface has been enhanced with new icons, menus and toolbars.
PowerBuilder Enterprise version 10.5 is priced at $2,995. Current users on an Upgrade Subscription Plan pay $645..
Posted by Paul Krill on April 17, 2006 04:31 PM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
ActivIdentity Smartens Up Single Sign-On
ActivIdentity is shipping SecureLogin v6.0, a rev of the SSO (single sign-on) solution acquired with Protocom that integrates support for ActivIdentity’s smart-card- or PKI-based authentication solution. Smart cards can be optionally used to store application credentials, implement one-time passwords, or to key the encryption of user data stores. Pricing starts at $79 per user.
ActivIdentity SecureLogin 6.0, ActivIdentity
Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 03:33 PM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Packeteer Brings Application Acceleration to WAN Shaper
Packeteer today announced that Release 8.0 software for its PacketShaper WAN optimization appliances will become available in early May. The new edition debuts an optional TCP and HTTP application acceleration module to complement PacketShaper’s QoS and compression capabilities, and it incorporates header compression and quality statistics for voice and video. Pricing of the Acceleration Module ranges from $250 for the 2Mbps appliance to about $10,000 for the 155Mbps appliance.
PacketShaper Release 8.0, Packeteer
Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 03:32 PM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
PolyServe Clusters Sprawling SQL Servers
PolyServe has released the PolyServe SQL Server Utility, a Microsoft SQL Server consolidation solution based on its Matrix Server shared data clustering technology. SQL Server Utility clusters multiple instances of SQL Server 2000 and 2005 databases across multiple x86 servers to ease management and scalability and improve performance and high availability. It supports as many as 16 instances per node and 16 nodes per cluster.
PolyServe SQL Server Utility, PolyServe
Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 03:30 PM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Pegasystems Announces Autonomic BPM
Pegasystems announced that Version 5.1 of its BPM suite, PegaRules Process Commander, will be released in May. End-users gain a richer AJAX interface; developers benefit from easier navigation, component search capabilities, wizards that streamline configuration, and preflight simulations for testing and debugging process execution, business-rules execution, integration components, and UI components. The new edition also leverages the process and rules engine for self-diagnosis and self-repair.
PegaRules Process Commander 5.1, Pegasystems
Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 02:51 PM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
NetSuite Flexes Process Automation, Woos Verticals
Hosted applications vendor NetSuite announced NetSuite 11.0, its latest integrated CRM and back-office suite. The new version, due in May, extends AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) beyond the current real-time dashboards into functional areas, including reporting, scheduling, and document management. It also adds complex process customization via a new scripting language, SuiteScript, built on JavaScript. The company also launched vertical editions of NetSuite for wholesale/distribution, services, and software companies.
NetSuite 11.0, NetSuite
Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 02:48 PM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
New e-mail management services from MessageOne
MessageOne, a provider of e-mail management services introduced today new hosted service including Email Archive, Recovery, Encryption and BlackBerry Continuity.
With Email Archive customers can store their messages just once and maintain a large archive without violating internal space quotas. That single copy can support a variety of uses, such as doing legal searches, restoring lost messages and monitoring audit trails, explains Paul D'Arcy, VP of marketing for MessageOne.
A complete package comprehensive of Email Continuity, BlackBerry Continuity, Archive, Recovery, Security, & Encryption for a minimum of 250 users starts at $6 per user per month. Each GB of storage will cost an additional $5 per month.
The complete set of services from MessageOne is available immediately.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 17, 2006 09:57 AM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
EMC improves Clariion based VTL
EMC Corporation is announcing today the Clariion DL210 a new model of its disk tape library family that can scale from 4 to 24 TB using 500GB SATA (serial ATA) drives and offers performance of up to 380MBps, according to EMC.
"We are offering a 50 percent performance improvement over previous generations at about half the price" - says Jay Krone, EMC's director of Clariion product marketing. The new entry level unit starts at about $50,000.
EMC is also announcing improved integration of its CDL (Clariion Disk library) software with EMC NetWorker 7.3, which should make easy tracking a backup set across all media, both on disk and on tape, say Krone.
CDL software adds also support for IBM System i host machines (previously known as AS400) and its native backup application, and can emulate a variety of additional tape libraries.
Later this year, in Q2, EMC plans to add "virtual tape shredding" a feature to prevent unauthorized disclosure by securely erasing the content of disk backups.
The improved integration of CDL with NetWorker 7.3 is also timed for release in Q2, while other new features are available immediately, according to EMC.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 17, 2006 08:33 AM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Maxtor to ship secure minidrive
Maxtor Corporation is shipping today a new portable drive, the OneTouch III Mini Edition, that weighting only about 7 ounces offers a nominal capacity of 60GB or 100GB and two levels of security to protect its data content.
Built to connect using USB 2.0 or pearler versions, the new drives include DriveLock, which is essentially access control managed from the unit's firmware. A drive equipped with DriveLock is not accessible without the correct password, even if removed from its case and installed to a different unit, says Maxtor.
To further protect its data content the drive is bundled with encryption software and with other applications to provide backup of and restore of the OS and customer's data from corruptions.
The Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition has a suggested retail price of $149.95 for the 60 GB model and of $199.95 for the larger unit.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 17, 2006 07:37 AM
April 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft releases Atlas toolkit
Microsoft this week released an Atlas Control Toolkit enabling developers using Visual Studio to build controls that use Atlas client-side technologies.
Atlas is a framework for building rich Web applications on top of ASP.Net 2.0. Developers can use the toolkit in Atlas-enabled Web sites to build reusable components. The toolkit features source code, documentation and samples. Code is being released as a Shared Source project. The kit is downloadable here.
Microsoft also has posted Release Candidate 1 of a Web Application Project option for Visual Studio 2005. This provides the same Web project approach as with Visual Studio 2003, but with Visual Studio 2005 features such as refactoring, class diagrams, test development and generics.
The project is downloadable here.
Microsoft on April 10, meanwhile, released an April Community Technology Preview of Atlas, foucsing on bug fixes and security.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 13, 2006 10:46 AM
April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Icesoft boosts AJAX, Java, Web apps
Boosting development of Web applications, Icesoft Technologies this week released a beta version of Icefaces Community Edition, a framework for J2EE featuring AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) functionality.
Components are featured to reduce the complexity of application development. No applets or proprietary plug-ins are required. Icefaces applications are rendered as JavaServer Faces applications and Java developers are sheltered from doing JavaScript-related development.
Applications can be deployed to J2EE application servers such as IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and JBoss. Collaborative development is supported.
The offering can be downloaded here.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 12, 2006 11:39 AM
April 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Zend offers IP protection for PHP code
Zend Technologies on Wednesday is shipping Zend Guard 4, enabling developers, businesses and ISVs to protect intellectual property in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) code.
The product line features protection against reverse engineering of code while an application is being encoded. Zend Guard 4 is comprised of an encoder and a license manager, to protect the mass distribution of commercial PHP applications. Licenses can be modified or renewed without deploying new software, Zend said. Different license models, such as concurrent user or server-specific models, can be used.
A new interface features wizards to help encode applications and manage licenses. The product supports PHP 5.1.
Zend Guard 4 costs $995 for an annual subscription.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 11, 2006 12:06 PM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Service will zap data on lost notebooks
This week Everdream, a desktop management company, will launch the Theft Recovery Managed Service.
While the service may be too late for the 200,000 Fidelity financial services customers who's retirement information was lost along with the laptop that held it last month, it will help insure that such future carelessness is not as catastrophic.
An agent residing in each notebook will alert the Everdream Control Center when an unauthorized user tries to connect to the Internet.
The act of connecting triggers the launch of an application that will either encrypt or delete data on the computer.
As part of the service Everdream also offers an Online Backup service that saves selected data to its data center.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on April 10, 2006 03:55 PM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Fluke Networks aims to ease distributed network managemnt
Giving a new arsenal of tools to admins responsible for maintaining the health of a distributed network, Fluke Networks today announced its integrated Distributed Network Analysis and Monitoring Solution (DNAMS).
The solution equips network admins with the tools to monitor and troubleshoot both local and remote networks, all from a centralized location. "Fluke Networks offers customers a way to meet the challenges associated with maintaining local and remote branch offices," said Lisa Schwartz, solution marketing manager at Everett, Wash.-based Fluke. "Network operations can deal with issues at local and remote offices often times even before users begin seeing problems."
Central to DNAMS is Fluke's OptiView Server, which collects and correlates detailed performance information gathered from OptiView Workgroup Analyzers and OptiView WAN Analyzers placed at remote locations.
The solution also provides automated network diagrams and connection path information of specific network devices down to slot and port level detail to aid troubleshooting, according to Schwartz.
The release of DNAMS comes at a time when distributed networks are becoming increasingly prevalent. "Nearly 90 percent of employees work away from headquarters, and maintaining their productivity requires a solid IT infrastructure and centralized tools to manage it," said Robin Gareiss, executive vice president and senior founding partner at Nemertes Research.
According to Nemertes, IT organizations can spend anywhere from $9,600 to $48,000 per IT staff person per year on troubleshooting remote network problems. The cost savings with a solution such a Fluke's DNAMS for even a medium sized enterprise can exceed $300,000 per year.
Fluke's Distributed Network Analysis and Monitoring Solution is available now. Pricing varies depending on configuration.
Posted by Ted Samson on April 10, 2006 09:41 AM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Exabyte to uncork another Magnum
Exabyte Corporation is announcing today a new version of its 2U Magnum autoloader intended for entry level automation users.
Dubbed Magnum 224, the new unit mounts one full height LTO-3 drive or up to two half-height LTO-2 drives.
The new rack-mountable autoloader comes standard with a 12 cartridge magazine and one import/export port on the right side, and can add one more I/E port and another 12 slots magazine to the left side of the unit.
According to Exabyte, the Magnum 224 offers easy operations, for example offering dedicated controls for each magazine and for the I/E port,and user-managed drive and magazine updates.
For host connectivity the Magnum 224 has 4 LVD SCSI ports and an Ethernet port for remote management.
Exabyte estimates a street price around $4,600 for a unit with 1 LTO-2 drive and 1 magazine. Price includes bar code reader and 1 year warranty with on-site, business hours service.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 10, 2006 06:16 AM
April 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)
BEA offers beta of software platform
BEA Systems this week released a beta version of WebLogic Platform 9.2, featuring the company's application server, portal and developer platform.
Included are WebLogic Server, WebLogic Portal and BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform. Portal 9.2 offers content management enhancements, improved federation and the GroupSpace collaborative application and framework.
Workshop is based on Eclipse and features tooling for Apache Beehive technologies, page flows for MVC (Model-View Controller) Web development and support for standards-based Java Web services and Java 5 annotations.
The beta release is downloadable here.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 7, 2006 11:57 AM
April 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Compuware links software testing, Microsoft ALM
Compuware is shipping an upgraded version of its functional testing product for software that works with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team System application lifecycle management package.
Compuware TestPartner 5.4 supports both the new Team System and .Net Framework 2.0, supplementing Team System with enterprise-level functional testing during the software development process.
"It now allows developers and testers to share common testing assets and it allows people to improve the quality of their applications earlier in the lifecycle," said Mark Eshelby, Compuware quality solutions product manager.
Other new features in TestPartner 5.4 include:
* An ActiveData wizard for automatic data parameterization, to build data-driven tests for less-technical users.
* An Import/Export wizard for moving, sharing and archiving test assets.
* Support for the Java 1.4.2 and 5.0 specifications as well as for the SAP 6.20 GUI for HTML and the SAP 6.40 GUI for Windows.
* A test results summary.
When purchased separately, TestPartner 5.4 costs $6,000 per concurrent user. It also can be purchased part of the QACenter Enterprise Edition testing suite, which starts in price at $8,000 per concurrent user.
Earlier this week, Compuware announced an agreement to acquire requirements management software vendor SteelTrace for approximately $20 million.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 6, 2006 01:31 PM
April 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sun adds new versions of Java SE
Sun Microsystems has expanded its offerings for the embedded development market with two new editions of Java SE.
The new offerings include a reduced footprint version of the Java SE platform that uses only 23MB of storage space, and a version of the Java SE platform designed specifically for the PowerPC processor.
In addition, the company unveiled the JVM Tuning and Benchmarking Service, which evaluates Java code running on customers' hardware and recommends improvements to application performance through optimizing the JVM to customers' specific situations.
Sun also will be demonstrating an early release of its Sun Java Real-Time System 2.0 at the Embedded Systems Conference this week.
More information on Java SE for embedded development can be found at http://java.sun.com/j2se/embedded.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 5, 2006 08:01 AM
April 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Eclipse unveils open source projects
The Eclipse Foundation on Tuesday announced several new projects and releases aimed at extending the Eclipse platform in the embedded and device software market.
Among the new initiatives is the next release of the C/C++ Development Tools (CDT) project, which, along with the Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) project established last year, is being demoed at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif., this week.
The CDT and DSDP projects extend the Eclipse platform and provide frameworks for OEMs and vendors of real-time operating systems (RTOSs), software development tools, and electronic design automation (EDA) tools.
The CDT project forms the basis of at least 17 commercially available development tools, including those from QNX Software Systems, Intel, Nokia, Texas Instruments, and Siemens. More than 25 companies are contributing to the CDT project.
The first Eclipse projects are slated to be released in June; commercial products are expected to ship shortly after. Both projects are actively recruiting new contributors to their technology.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 4, 2006 08:18 AM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Interwoven weaves customers into CMS experience
Enterprise content managment giant Interwoven introduced Monday what it said was the "first end-to-end customer management experience solution for the industry" with a new solution that includes deals with mobile giant Ericsson and RIM for its BlackBerry service.
Interwoven CMO Bill Seawick said solutions for supply chain, CRM, and finances has all evolved to focus on customer experience, but not enterprise content management.
"This has one of the biggest impacts [in terms of return on investment] but hasn't been automated," Seawick said.
The company introduced the Interwoven Customer Experience Solution at its GearUp conference in Florida, highighting customer experience best practices from companies such as Allstate, Avaya, DaimlerChrysler and HSBC.
The introduction includes content management and publishing, digital asset management and wireless publishing solutions.
Interwoven has struck a deal with Ericsson to enable the mobile provider's Media Solution to publish media to cell phones and smart devices.
In a deal with RIM, Seawick said the solution would enable document synchronization on BlackBerrys in accounting or legal firms, for example.
Seawick said the solution went beyond what rivals Stellant and Vignette offered because it was "bigger than any one vendor."
Posted by Mike Barton on April 3, 2006 03:04 PM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Emulex updates its management applications
Emulex Corporation today unveiled HBAnywhere 3.0 a new version of its management suite that adds new diagnostic and monitoring features to the centralized HBAs administration capabilities across multiple platforms offered by previous editions.
The new version of HBAnywhere adds out of band management to the existing in band management features, requiring secure authentication for those connections.
New improvements to the diagnostic capabilities of HBAnywhere include automatically collecting drivers and firmware information, beaconing, to promptly identify adapters that need servicing, and drivers profiling to ensure consistency for similar configurations.
HBAnywhere 3.0 will begin shipping this quarter.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 3, 2006 08:22 AM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Cisco adds 528-port director to the MDS 9000 line
Cisco Systems announced today a new director class switch, new switching modules, an update to its SAN-OS and an increase in the number of ports supported on previous models.
The new switch, the MDS 9513 Multilayer Director, can scale up to 528 FC ports, each capable of up to 4Gbps, and supports also 10Gbps ports.
"Clearly the most scalable system by a large margin" says Paul Dul, director of product management for data center and storage technology at Cisco. "Our closest competitors top out at 256 ports" he adds.
The new switch offers the same features of previous MDS systems, for example, partitioning the fabric into VSANs (virtual SAN) and routing traffic across VSANs. The new SAN-OS 3.0 adds more features such as the ability to allocate bandwidth to specific ports.
Cisco announced also an increase in the number of ports supported by previous models, bringing the MDS 9506 to scale up to 192 ports and the MDS 9509 to grow up to 336 ports.
"All our 9500 models have twice the system bandwidth required" - points out Dul. "If we loose one of our supervisors or switch fabric there is still enough bandwidth to maintain 100 percent throughput" he explains - "and this is unique to Cisco".
The new modules announced today offer 12, 24 and 48 FC ports on a single blade. Cisco added also a 4-port 10Gbps module intended for ISL (inter-system links) and to improve efficiency when connecting to a MAN (metropolitan area network).
"There is a really compelling economic case for [using] 10 gig FC to connect to a MAN" - states Dul - "because what I get is a 10 gig throughput without the need for aggregation devices".
"Customers will be able to use the new switching modules also on older systems" Dul adds.
Shipments of the news systems and of the switching modules announced today will begin in May, according to Cisco.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 3, 2006 08:01 AM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Hitachi reveals new TagmaStore
Hitachi Data Systems announced today a new storage array, the largest model to date of its modular TagmaStore line.
Dubbed AMS1000 (Adaptable Modular Storage) the new array has built-in iSCSI and FC connectivity and provides concurrent file serving and block serving to a variety of OSes.
"You can have a combination of any two of those three protocols" - explains Hu Yoshida, CTO for HDS - "iSCSI and FC or iSCSI and NAS or NAS and FC".
The AMS1000 can mount a variety of disk drives including SATA units and supports the most common RAID levels, including RAID 6. Filling its two cabinets with 500 GB drives would create a total capacity of 208 TB.
In addition, the AMS1000 mounts 16 GB of cache memory, has a cached bandwidth of 13 GBps and supports up to 4,096 LUNs. Similarly to other AMS models, the AMS1000 include software such as Cache Partition Manager to optimize cache performance for critical applications.
"We can do up to 32 Logical Cache Partitions" - indicates Yoshida - "This allows us to give each user a fair share [of the cache]. We can change the cache slot size and the cache partitioning dynamically now, which is a new exclusive feature".
AMS1000 arrays offer also WORM (write once read many) capability and Copy-on-Write Snapshot software for local copies. Other data protection features should follow later on.
"Later this year we will also provide non-disruptive data movement across multiple tiers of storage and asynchronous remote copy" - points out Yoshida.
The AMS1000 replaces the Thunder 9585 and is available immediately worldwide. Hitachi indicates that AMS1000 arrays are built in compliance with RoHS, the European Union directive for the reduction of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment.
According to Hitachi, pricing of the AMS1000 will be consistent with similar configurations of the Thunder 9585.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 3, 2006 08:00 AM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Dell and EMC launch the AX150 line
The two companies announced today the Dell/EMC AX150, a new line of storage devices that replaces and upgrades the AX100.
The AX150 is available with FC or iSCSI connectivity, and can be ordered with dual or single controller. Redundant power supply is now available also in single controller configurations. Both units support RAID levels 5, 0 and 1.
Mounting 500GB SATA drives in its 12 drive slots the AX100 offers a nominal capacity of up to 6 TB in a 2U enclosure.
According to EMC taking advantage of the Native Command Queuing feature of SATA II the AX150 offers significantly better performance than the AX100.
The AX150i, the iSCSI version, has dual iSCSI ports for improved performance and resilience and a new wizard to simplify configuring multiple servers.
Both the FC and iSCSI version of the AX150 support up to 10 hosts and should be available at the same price of similarly configured AX100 models.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 3, 2006 08:00 AM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Creekpath launches Acuity storage management solution
Creekpath on Monday unveiled an asset and service management solution. Creekpath Acuity is storage resource management (SRM) software that uses business analytics and agentless technology to give administrators a dynamic picture of storage capacity and how storage assets are being used.
Creekpath Acuity builds on the Creekpath SRM software suite and offers new BI functionality, with more than 200 pre-built, configurable analytic templates to facilitate discussions between business and IT about storage costs, consumption, and supply planning.
IT managers can also use Acuity to create an enterprise-wide storage configuration management database that integrates with other management software, enabling companies to consolidate and analyze supply/demand trends for all storage assets, regardless of where they are located.
Creekpath Acuity will be available later this month.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 3, 2006 07:31 AM