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Update: Huawei, investment fund to buy 3Com for $2B Network equipment vendor 3Com has agreed to be acquired by associates of Bain Capital and of Huawei Technology in a deal worth $2.2 billion, 3Com said Friday. Tech giants chart research goals Power consumption, parallelism, and the rapidly-expanding world of mobile communications are among the leading areas of research and development currently being investigated within some of the IT world's largest companies.  September 26, 2:53 p.m. PDT Cisco to roll out branch office networking gear Enterprise branch offices increasingly need the same IT tools that the head office has, and Cisco Systems is set to unveil branch networking gear Wednesday to help fill that need. September 26, 5:47 a.m. PDT Fear of insider threats hits home The more money that companies spend on securing their IT operations from external attack, the more it seems they become aware that the potential threat posed by their own employees remains their most significant risk. September 18, 10:42 a.m. PDT Adaptec's little SAN that can Many different combinations of drives, controllers, and software are available in storage arrays for small and midsize businesses, but one example that you should not miss is the Snap Server 720i that Adaptec trotted out last week. September 17, 3:00 a.m. PDT Introducing the 2007 InfoWorld Bossies Not too long ago, open source meant starving developers; scant documentation; an ugly, outdated Web site; and software that lived in perpetual beta. Now open source software is becoming big business. “Now hiring” is a common sight on project home pages, and .org and SourceForge sites that used to point straight to source code archives are redirected to .com URLs that celebrate the commercial success of what started out as collaborations among unpaid coders of like mind. September 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Best of open source in storage Combining “open source” and "storage” in the same sentence used to trigger a sardonic grin, but no longer. The availability of free and open software is as true today for storage as it is for operating systems and applications. September 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Open source storage gets a virtual lift It has been a while since I last discussed Coraid, but two announcements the company made at LinuxWorld earlier this month have me thinking about AoE (ATA over Ethernet) these days. August 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT SMB technology: Replacing in-house software with applications in the cloud In the near future, there's only one way to go for SMBs when it comes to purchasing business software -- and that's out of house. Whether it's full-on SaaS (software as a service), where users access all facets of the application through a browser, or a hosted product (including hosted Exchange, where only the server component is off-site and users employ a standard desktop client such as Outlook), either model is simply too cost-effective for SMBs to ignore. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Processors: Dividing chips into many virtual cores The current approach taken by x86 CPUs -- to stuff as many processor cores and as much cache memory as will fit on one chip -- will prove impossible to scale beyond a certain point. And adding more, big, hot processor cores may not be the best fit for server roles that call for managing large workloads over long periods of time. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Pundits on parade: What’s next in tech You’ve heard of Christmas in July, that classic advertising gimmick designed to lure shoppers into stores despite the oppressive heat and humidity. We’ll, we’ve got New Year’s in August, which invites you to stay indoors and read “The next big things in IT” -- 15 predictions about the future of technology. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Sourcefire acquires ClamAV open-source anti-malware project Network security specialist Sourcefire announced Friday that it has acquired ClamAV, an open-source gateway anti-malware project whose technologies are used in the products of a number of other vendors. August 17, 8:58 a.m. PDT IT at Beijing Olympic Games to cost $400 million The price tag for IT and communications at the world's biggest sporting event will run to around $400 million and use the expertise of thousands of IT managers and engineers. August 15, 4:22 a.m. PDT Hospital undergoes wireless surgery For years, wireless technologies have only shown up in many U.S. hospitals in the form of rolling computers with Wi-Fi network access, but as evidenced at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, times are changing. August 13, 2:37 p.m. PDT Novell buys endpoint security firm Senforce Novell announced on Monday that it has acquired Senforce Technologies, a provider of endpoint and network security tools, for an undisclosed sum. August 13, 9:40 a.m. PDT Cisco sees Web 2.0 boom after posting strong Q4 Cisco Systems expects Web 2.0 to drive a growth curve similar to the Internet expansion of the 1990s, accelerating the company's revenue growth, chairman and CEO John Chambers said Tuesday as Cisco announced strong fourth-quarter numbers. August 8, 5:04 a.m. PDT Update: Nokia posts big Q2 profit on one-time gain from Siemens venture Second-quarter net profit soared at Nokia thanks to a large one-time gain from the company's new telecommunications equipment manufacturing venture with Siemens. August 2, 9:14 a.m. PDT Cisco muffles Linksys death knell The saga of Cisco Systems and its Linksys consumer and small-business division continued last week as Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers hinted at the companies' future branding strategy. July 30, 12:26 p.m. PDT The SMB backup dilemma Every time I hear a pitch for an SMB backup solution it comes complete with a chilling statistic that suggests smaller companies are tone-deaf to data protection. July 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT 3Com pins hopes on China's low labor costs Networking equipment vendor 3Com is counting on low labor costs in China to help the company earn better margins on its products and compete against rivals like Cisco Systems, the company's chief executive officer said Wednesday. July 12, 4:49 a.m. PDT Silver Peak hits new WAN-optimization heights You know what makes network administrators happy? Making efficient use of their equipment and eliminating "performance stinks" calls from end-users. Thus, investing in an effective WAN optimization and acceleration solution such as Silver Peak NX-5500 2.0 can put a big smile on your network admin's face. July 12, 3:00 a.m. PDT Fast guide to fancy SAN management No longer tied to a monolithic enterprise price tag, many of the sophisticated storage management capabilities outlined below can now be found in affordable SAN midrange systems from Compellent, iQstor, Xiotech, and other vendors. July 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Midrange SANs master high-end features SAN storage systems continue to evolve quickly, with features trickling down from market leaders such as EMC and Hitachi Data Systems to midtier players. The three systems reviewed here, from Compellent, iQstor, and Xiotech, offer a surprising array of functionality including nearly every feature one might find in $250,000 enterprise-class systems except CAS (content addressed storage). Their impressive feature sets include 4Gbps FC (Fibre Channel) connectivity, iSCSI support, tiered storage, local and remote replication and snapshots, and even thin provisioning, boot from SAN, virtualization, and automatic expansion of volumes. Compellent even provides automatic migration of data from first- to second- or third-tier storage -- an ILM (information lifecycle management) tool that is usable without requiring a complex setup. Both Compellent and Xiotech offer monitoring and support services similar to those the tier-one storage vendors provide to large enterprises, allowing customers to respond proactively to projected failures. July 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Classic Storage Insider, part I Mario Apicella is on vacation, so in his absence we present two classic Storage Insider columns for your reading pleasure. This week, the spotlight is on SANs: their protocols and standards, and how they could affect you. June 22, 3:00 a.m. PDT Suit up your storage network with business sense No longer capable of remaining on the sidelines as a separate administrative domain, today's networked storage must be managed with a deeper awareness of business objectives. June 18, 3:00 a.m. PDT EMC strikes first partnership with Indian outsourcer EMC Corp. will train more than 1,000 Wipro Ltd. staff in the use of its storage technologies as part of an alliance announced by the companies on Wednesday. June 13, 4:09 a.m. PDT Tech companies set goals for energy efficiency A group of some of the biggest technology companies said they've committed to a plan to improve the power efficiency of equipment they make and use. June 12, 1:05 p.m. PDT 2007 InfoWorld CTO 25: Marc Willebeek-LeMair Dr. Marc Willebeek-LeMair, CTO of 3Com, is used to wrestling with weighty problems. After all, the man spent a decade at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center working on so-called intelligent infrastructure technologies and has done research on everything from distributed computing and high-speed networking technologies to network processors and management systems. So when Willebeek-LeMair talks about the problems facing the enterprise networking industry, people tend to listen. June 8, 3:00 a.m. PDT 2007 InfoWorld CTO 25: Phil Nail As concerns over potential power shortages and global warming rise, some IT leaders are just now dipping their toes into the waters of energy efficiency and environmental responsibility. But Affordable Internet Service Online (AISO) co-founder and CTO Phil Nail has been riding high atop the ecogreen wave since the 1990s. June 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Betting on the future of parallel NFS Are you using or planning to use NFSv4 (Network File System version 4)? I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the answers to that question are a flat-out no or a quizzical stare, because this latest incarnation of the Linux/Unix file system is still a long way from becoming a mainstream solution. However, let me make it clear that this impasse is not for lack of merit, because NFSv4 has a lot to like. June 1, 3:00 a.m. PDT Google buys into security, acquires GreenBorder Google has jumped into the anti-malware market, snatching up browser-based security software maker GreenBorder Technologies for an undisclosed amount of money. May 29, 9:32 a.m. PDT Former Hitachi Data Systems chief to head up HP storage In its quest to re-energize its storage business, Hewlett-Packard has recruited the former president and CEO of storage rival Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). May 25, 2:22 p.m. PDT Network show blooms, thinks green The Interop networking trade show is growing bigger by getting broader. May 21, 1:28 p.m. PDT ColdWatt: making servers mean and green High-efficiency power supplies might not have the same "wow" factor as some other technologies associated with developing a greener, more cost-efficient datacenter (say, server virtualization). But consider this: replacing your existing power supplies with more efficient alternatives from ColdWatt could save $50,000 a year for a 400-server datacenter. Now isn't that wow-worthy? May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Nortel plans major enterprise product launch Nortel will soon unveil significant additions to its enterprise arsenal, including its initial entré into the WAN acceleration market. May 14, 8:06 a.m. PDT Startup skirts datacenter bottlenecks with cache Seeking to alleviate the bottleneck woes of I/O-intensive apps, startup Gear6 today announced CACHEfx, a scalable cache appliance that makes as much as 5TB of cached data available to applications without having to retrieve it from storage. May 14, 3:00 a.m. PDT Startups class of '06: Where are they now? In 2006, InfoWorld uncovered 15 startups that emerged after the nuclear winter that followed the dot-com bust with cool, useful technologies. Well, another year has brought a new crop of startup darlings, such as the companies we're profiling each day in May for our Month of Enterprise Startups (MOES) feature. But MOES got us thinking about last year's startups. In the year that has followed, how have these innovators fared? May 7, 3:00 a.m. PDT Will server virtualization end the FC-iSCSI debate? Let’s take a trip to the future this week. Imagine that we travel forward in time -- say, 100 years from now. How will the technological landscape of storage change in one century? What will our descendants think of the state of our technology? May 4, 3:00 a.m. PDT Zafirovski maps out Nortel strategy Nortel wants to become a leader in helping companies and carriers take advantage of an explosion of network connections, President and CEO Mike Zafirovski told shareholders on Wednesday, according to a company statement. May 2, 5:08 p.m. PDT Startup enters I/O virtualization fray Virtualization startup 3Leaf Systems today announced its flagship V-8000 Virtual I/O Server, as well as $20 million in Series B investment, led by Intel Capital. May 1, 12:33 p.m. PDT Onaro looks to bridge app-storage gap Seeking to aid enterprises in their ongoing struggle to better align storage resources with application requirements, Onaro today released an upgrade to its SANscreen Application Insight product. April 30, 3:00 a.m. PDT Alcatel-Lucent sales, operating profit dip in Q1 First-quarter operating profit dipped at telecoms equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent on weak sales of the company's products for wireless and core networks. April 24, 7:03 a.m. PDT Another step toward 10 Gig SANs Sometimes in my work, things just seem to fall in place, as if someone were pulling the strings behind the scenes. I am not suggesting that there is any conspiracy here, but last week's column on FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), a new proposed standard to consolidate transport for both FC (Fibre Channel) and Ethernet, was a great segue into this week's announcement of a new 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch from Woven Systems. April 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft eyes datacenters in a box Fast, cheap and all over the place. That's how technology experts behind Microsoft's fast-growing Live offerings envision the future of the enterprise data center in a Web 2.0 driven world. April 18, 10:42 a.m. PDT US military plans to put Internet router in space The U.S. military plan to test an Internet router in space, in a project that could also benefit civilian broadband satellite communications. April 12, 7:59 a.m. PDT Cisco eyes future Linksys strategy Cisco is modifying the channel strategy for its Linksys consumer and small-business brand as the enterprise networking giant moves deeper into its subsidiary's traditional territory. April 3, 4:33 p.m. PDT Licensing deal with Marvell a first for Sun's new unit Sun is licensing its multithreaded 10GB Ethernet networking technology to Marvell Technology Group in Sun's first deal since the creation of a separate Microelectronics group within the company one week ago. April 3, 2:32 p.m. PDT Cisco adds 3G to branch router 3G (third-generation) wireless will grow up at the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando this week, finding its place in Cisco Systems business routers. March 27, 5:06 a.m. PST APC's good Big Brother How’s the weather in your datacenter? Could you pull up a time line graph of temperature, humidity, and maybe even video footage of the room on a whim? Using APC’s NetBotz monitoring appliances and InfraStruXure Central management console, you could. March 19, 3:00 a.m. PST Open source VoIP makes the business connection Nearly three years since Jon “maddog” Hall predicted that “VoIP using an open source solution, such as Asterisk, will generate more business than the entire Linux marketplace today,” open source VoIP for the enterprise remains a wild frontier. SMB uptake has been considerable, as open source VoIP’s promise of control and cost savings make it a natural fit. But when it comes to large-scale implementations, open source voice has yet to get most enterprises to listen. March 19, 3:00 a.m. PST Lending ear to open source VoIP Whereas commercial VoIP vendors typically supply their own phones, tying them to their IP PBXes for solid integration and providing phone setup, configuration, and maintenance as part of their packages, when it comes to deploying an open source VoIP solution such as Asterisk, it’s strictly a BYOP (bring your own phone) affair. March 19, 3:00 a.m. PST Case study: Asterisk proves its worth Despite Digium’s current positioning of Asterisk for the midmarket, plenty of large-scale implementations speak to the scalability and versatility of the open source IP PBX. One such rollout — that of Summer Bay Resorts, a time-share vacation property company — provides ample evidence that if the phone is the lifeblood of your business, Asterisk is more than up to the task. March 19, 3:00 a.m. PST Betting on top storage speed Some areas of the storage market are crowded with too many similar products. Think, for example, of clustered IP SANs -- it's something of a niche segment, but it's vibrant with competing solutions from vendors like EqualLogic, Intransa, and LeftHand Networks. March 9, 3:00 a.m. PST More IT war stories Off the Record, the real-world slice of life that graces the last page of InfoWorld, is one of our most popular columns. I know this from reader surveys and from all the e-mail I receive about it. As reader Roland Sickenberger put it recently, “It’s my favorite part of the magazine, kind of like a ‘Dilbert come to life’ thing.” March 5, 3:00 a.m. PST EqualLogic's iSCSI SAN hits storage management high notes It seems that every time I configure an EqualLogic iSCSI SAN array in the company of folks who’ve never seen the process, they ask the same question: “Really? You’re already done?” The answer, always, is Yes. February 26, 3:00 a.m. PST LeftHand boosts its SAN/iQ Many companies would embrace the superior performance and enhanced reliability of clustered storage were it not for the fear that adoption would cost a fortune and lock them into proprietary hardware. February 26, 3:00 a.m. PST New choices in networked storage One of the best known names in NAS and iSCSI is Network Appliance, a company that has embraced SANs as well. Aneil Balkaran, manager of Windows on Unix at Consol Energy, runs an iSCSI SAN on a pair of clustered NetApp FAS 960 C boxes. These machines provide SAN and NAS all in the same unit. (See also "iSCSI: The rising enterprise star" and "The trends that shape iSCSI's trajectory.") February 26, 3:00 a.m. PST iSCSI: The rising enterprise star Fibre Channel was definitely not top of mind when Chris Brown hit the wall on disk space and, in mid-2005, decided to go shopping for a SAN. Brown is IT manager for DeltaValve, a division of Curtiss-Wright Flow Control. “I have an IT staff of two,” he explains, “and we do not have the resources to support Fibre Channel.” February 26, 3:00 a.m. PST The trends that shape iSCSI's trajectory Where is iSCSI headed? Good question. A recent blogstorm with posts from well-known names at EMC, EqualLogic, and NetApp among others leaves the answer in doubt. True, shipments of iSCSI gear continue to climb steadily, but conventional analyst wisdom dictates that iSCSI’s slice of the SAN market may remain quite thin. (See also "iSCSI: The rising enterprise star" and "New choices in networked storage.") February 26, 3:00 a.m. PST Fujitsu Siemens targets SMBs with new recovery system For midsize businesses seeking a relatively easy, inexpensive way to keep their servers running around the clock, Fujitsu Siemens Computers has launched a fully automated backup recovery system. February 22, 6:52 a.m. PST Gauging Net consumption However it is that urban myths get started, it’s kind of a bummer when one of them gets dispelled. A couple years ago, for example, a Chinese astronaut went into space and debunked the myth that the Great Wall is visible from up there. February 22, 3:00 a.m. PST Drive-by Web attack could hit home routers If you haven't changed the default password on your home router, do so now. That's what researchers at Symantec and Indiana University are saying, after publishing the results of tests that show how attackers could take over your home router using malicious JavaScript code. February 15, 5:02 a.m. PST SAN and NAS virtualization After some years of false starts and false hopes, storage virtualization, also known as block virtualization, is finally proving its worth. All the major vendors have embraced it, most notably IBM, EMC, and HDS (Hitachi Data Systems); the solutions themselves have improved; and customers, typically large shops managing large SANs with intense data availability requirements, understand how to deploy it and where to get good ROI. No longer a technology in search of a problem, storage virtualization offers a way to address a wide range of storage management woes. February 12, 3:00 a.m. PST Dell PowerConnect 6248 a perfectly priced performer Switches are the umpires of the IT field: They’re either invisible, or they’re in trouble. Nothing less than 100 percent reliability is acceptable. February 12, 3:00 a.m. PST Hitachi and Archivas tie the knot The news of Hitachi Data Systems revealing its intention to buy Archivas probably did not surprise anybody because the two vendors have been partners for quite some time. February 9, 3:00 a.m. PST Mike Volpi, head of Cisco's routing business, resigns The departure of Mike Volpi as the head of Cisco Systems Inc.'s routing business "coincides" with a reorganization of that part of the company, but is not the reason for his resignation, a Cisco spokesman said Thursday. February 8, 10:29 a.m. PST So long, McData Brocade's acquisition of McData has come and gone in what feels like an abrupt change, despite months of elapsed time from start to finish. February 2, 3:00 a.m. PST Women in technology: A call to action A quick scan of almost any IT department -- from the trenches to the corner office -- confirms it: Women who embrace technology as a lifelong career remain a rare breed. To be sure, opportunity for women in technology has advanced in the past few decades, as have education initiatives aimed at leveling the playing field, but for every woman rising to prominence or embarking on a profession in IT, there seems to be another opting out of her career in technology. January 29, 3:03 a.m. PST Back to school: Getting girls into IT Despite the success of various education initiatives in the past several years, there’s little doubt that the shortage of women in technology begins on the playground. As such, many industry leaders and experts believe the long-term solution to the gender imbalance in IT lies in women technologists going back to school -- way back, to high schools and even elementary schools to mentor young girls, who too often give up on math and science at an early age. January 29, 3:02 a.m. PST Activism provides competitive advantage for IT Encountering another woman working in technology was a rare event for me when I started out in IT many years ago. In the years since, women have made significant strides, sometimes against great odds, proving their mettle as both tech execs and engineers. January 29, 3:01 a.m. PST Gender crisis in IT You don’t need a degree in statistics to recognize that IT is a men’s club. Just walk the floor of any tech conference or, in all likelihood, your own office — XY chromosomes everywhere you look. January 29, 3:00 a.m. PST Packeteer iShared yields mixed WAN optimization results Poorly performing WAN links continue to be the bane of many network administrators. Wherever there is a WAN link, there will be performance degradation caused by latency and chatty protocols. Simply adding bandwidth is not the answer. Using appliance-based solutions on each end of the WAN circuit, however, can improve overall response time and throughput. January 26, 3:00 a.m. PST Cisco discloses three router security problems Cisco Systems is warning of three vulnerabilities within its Internet Operating System (IOS) software that could allow a denial-of-service (DoS) attack or let a hacker run arbitrary code on an affected switch router. January 25, 5:38 a.m. PST FTC clears Brocade-McData deal The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has cleared the pending acquisition of McData by Brocade Communications Systems after an antitrust review, removing the last regulatory hurdle to the deal. January 24, 4:23 a.m. PST The smart business of diversity Carly Fiorina served as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, the first woman to run a Fortune 20 company. After she was ousted, along with a $21 million exit package, Fiorina did what a lot of us would do if we had millions of dollars in the bank and some time on our hands: She wrote a book. In Tough Choices, published in October, Fiorina talks about rising to the top of a male-dominated culture. Fiorina spoke with InfoWorld correspondent Carmen Nobel for our upcoming feature on the issues women face in IT. January 22, 3:00 a.m. PST Will EMC's information gamble work? In June 2006, EMC announced that it would acquire RSA Security for $2.1 billion, only to be met with a healthy dose of analyst skepticism and a 3 percent drop in its stock price. Many on Wall Street considered the price tag too high in light of RSA’s 2005 revenues of $310 million. Moreover, industry observers were disquieted by EMC’s unrelenting buying spree: RSA was merely the most expensive purchase out of a whopping 23 acquisitions it had made since early 2003, which have crossed the spectrum from systems management to content management to BPO. January 22, 3:00 a.m. PST Lack of interoperability stunts powerline networking The lack of interoperability in powerline networking products used in homes is dramatically slowing down potential growth, industry leaders said during a panel discussion at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday. January 11, 8:35 a.m. PST Cisco injects old 7200 with new power It’s not terribly often that hardware vendors are so forward-thinking that they can retrofit a whole new class of hardware into an existing chassis. Cisco Systems, however, seems to be able to do this with ease. The new Cisco 7200 router is a perfect example. January 11, 3:00 a.m. PST Cabling blunder fouls up DoD network Back in the days of RG-58 Ethernet co-ax and Novell NetWare servers, I worked for a small networking firm. One of the VPs had friends at the Pentagon, and one day — to everyone’s amazement — we landed a lucrative contract to install a network for a military pay-and-benefits facility at the Department of Defense (DoD). This was supposed to be a ground-up installation, everything from pulling cable to configuring the server, setting up all the stations, and training the user community. January 9, 3:00 a.m. PST Cisco to buy IronPort for $830M Cisco Systems said on Thursday it is buying privately held IronPort Systems for $830 million in cash and stock. January 8, 3:00 a.m. PST As-needed networking rollouts pay off Networking buzzwords have had little impact on the core of most infrastructures in the past few years. Yet Gigabit, VoIP, and IPSes continue to receive attention, with many enterprises planning 2007 deployments. Unless absolutely necessary, however, these line items will prove to be bloated investments. January 8, 3:00 a.m. PST Cisco buys e-mail security firm for $830m Cisco Systems Inc. said on Thursday that it was buying IronPort Systems Inc. of San Bruno, Calif. for $830 million in cash and stock. January 4, 5:15 a.m. PST Storage: Hardware takes a backseat Ask two IT managers what were the most important storage trends for 2006, and you’ll probably receive two sharply different answers. The reason is that, this year more than ever, storage events defied any simplistic, black or white, one-sided description. January 1, 3:00 a.m. PST Networking: Convergence is at hand In networking, the big news of 2006 was the emergence of 10-Gigabit Ethernet as a mature, enterprise-ready technology. The past year also witnessed important advances in security and monitoring on the enterprise LAN, thanks to ever tightening integration and partnerships. January 1, 3:00 a.m. PST Technology of the Gods January is named after Janus, the two-faced Roman deity of beginnings and endings, who reportedly was able to look both forward and back. So for our Jan. 1 issue, we pay homage to the mythological immortal with our seventh annual Technology of the Year Awards, an analysis of where IT has been and where it’s going in 2007. January 1, 3:00 a.m. PST ProCurve switches work well for smaller (but growing) businesses Every organization has key growth points: earning the first dollar, hiring the first employee, moving from an unmanaged network switch to a managed device. Business consultants offer help with the first two, and HP’s ProCurve Networking wants to help with the third, using its 1800-series managed switches. December 29, 3:00 a.m. PST Ericsson scoops up Redback for $2.1 billion LM Ericsson has agreed to acquire Redback Networks Inc., a maker of carrier edge routers, for US$2.1 billion. December 20, 4:08 a.m. PST 2006 Year in Reviews: Storage In EMC’s march on the enterprise NAS market, two big feet fell this year in the form of the company’s Rainfinity (global file system) and Infoscape (file classification) releases, which we took for early spins in EMC’s labs. The year also brought a smooth rev of Windows Storage Server, a swell mid-range SAN from Compellent, and a slick tape library from Spectra Logic. December 18, 3:00 a.m. PST 2006 Year in Reviews: Networking After most of the vendors declined our invitation to a WAN shootout last year, we settled for a series of standalone reviews of WAN accelerators this year. As usual, Riverbed’s Steelhead shined -- so did products from Silver Peak, Blue Coat, and Cisco Systems, though they still swam in Steelhead’s wake. Perhaps competition will be stiff enough for a comparative test in 2007. Stay tuned. December 18, 3:00 a.m. PST Review of reviews It’s coming up on closing time for 2006. All around us, everyone is going into holiday mode. Not to be curmudgeonly contrarians, InfoWorld will be following suit, taking a one-week break before returning on Jan. 1 with our first print issue of the year. (It’s really only a semi-hiatus; InfoWorld.com will continue to perk over the holidays with a slightly reduced slate of stories.) December 18, 3:00 a.m. PST Cisco to breaks free of desktop with digital signage company nuy Cisco Systems is taking it to the storefront, the stadium and possibly even the streets by acquiring a digital signage company. December 15, 12:49 p.m. PST Fujitsu Siemens offers SAN bundle for small businesses Following a similar move by Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu Siemens Computers plans to announce a packaged storage area network (SAN) product on Thursday aimed at small and medium-size businesses. December 11, 4:49 a.m. PST Simplified storage for small businesses This was a rather busy week, no doubt because of the impending Storage Decisions conference. There's nothing like an industry event to fire up the marketing machines, but I was intrigued by the fact that many of the new products and announcements were going small -- as in small business. December 7, 3:00 a.m. PST Good ideas take time Two years ago, I publicly floated the concept that IT should start thinking more like entrepreneurs. What a disaster! I was speaking at a meeting of CTOs, and I mentioned that I’d heard of a few IT departments that were focusing, at least in part, on creating saleable new products and services for their companies. I asked the group what they thought of the idea. December 4, 3:00 a.m. PST EMC: Vendor cooperation key to data security The cool reception from Wall Street this summer after EMC’s announcement that it would buy RSA Security had EMC executives feeling a bit flummoxed -- like the guy who elopes, only to find out that his friends didn’t like his girlfriend to begin with. November 27, 3:00 a.m. PST Accelerating the SAN on a budget A couple of recent announcements from Cisco and Dell bring new, fast FC (Fibre Channel) and Ethernet switches to market at a price and with features that should make their competitors nervous. November 23, 3:00 a.m. PST Ethernet knows where it's going: 100 Gigabits Ethernet will keep accelerating, speeding up to 100G bps (bits per second) in the next few years, the head of a standards study group said Wednesday. November 22, 3:17 p.m. PST Cisco opens R&D center in west of Ireland Cisco Systems Inc. will open a research center in Ireland to develop unified communications products. November 22, 8:21 a.m. PST Consolidate, outsource, or both? Datacenter consolidation is the mega-solution for bringing IT costs, man-agement, and disaster recovery under control, but depending on a company’s goals and size, outsourcing can also play a useful complementary role. “Outsourcing should definitely be part of the decision process,” says Michael Bell, research vice president at Gartner. “Once you make the decision to consolidate or relocate, it then becomes a question of whether you should build a new datacenter, buy one, lease one, or outsource it.” November 20, 3:00 a.m. PST Simplify the workplace with IT datacenter consolidation TRW Automotive, a Tier One global supplier of auto safety products, had a big control problem. “We had always operated as a dozen or so largely independent business units, each with its own systems,” says Joe Drouin, vice president and CIO. “As a result, we had dozens of mission-critical applications, including multiple flavors of SAP, running in dozens of different places.” November 20, 3:00 a.m. PST > Hardware > Networking |
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