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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. 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 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 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 All-in-one backup for SMBs Choosing a proper backup solution can be a challenging task for a small business that may lack the time and skill to implement a winning mix of backup application, tape device, and intermediate disk layer. If ever there were a niche that cried out for an appliance-based solution, this is it. March 15, 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 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 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 Managing content in a rich media world For years, directors at the Dallas Museum of Art faced a daunting problem that threatened to stifle the growth of the century-old organization. The prolific use of computer-generated content was requiring them to store ever more videos, audio clips, and digital images relating to the museum’s vast collection of works to assist in research, accounting, outreach, and other day-to-day operations. January 8, 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 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 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 IBM unveils new tape virtualization engine IBM is unveiling Thursday a new virtual tape drive management system for mainframes that compares to similar technology introduced last spring by rival Sun Microsystems. September 21, 5:09 a.m. PDT Sun, IBM launch tape encryption technology Sun Microsystems and IBM are both introducing data tape encryption technology this week, protecting against a security breach that can endanger or embarrass an enterprise. September 13, 4:53 a.m. PDT EMC-HP storage race heats up Number two storage systems maker Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has closed the gap between it and number one EMC Corp. to what research company IDC calls "a statistical tie." September 1, 4:55 a.m. PDT Quantum DLT tape drive challenges LTO A new tape model from Quantum comes out about every two years, and it arrived as expected early this year in the form of the DLT-S4. August 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT Sun, Imation team up on tape drive Sun Microsystems has teamed up with data-storage vendor Imation to develop a new Sun StorageTek tape drive with improved capacity and security features. July 5, 8:14 a.m. PDT When plain NAS beats clustering If clustered NAS is the way to go, why do traditional NAS systems still account for the majority of deployments? June 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT InfoWorld CTO 25 The top technology slot in the enterprise has changed. Once, forward-looking CTOs and CIOs scanned the horizon for new technologies that would improve the lot of IT. Today, as many of this year’s top 25 CTOs can tell you, technology leaders must also focus on understanding the business goals of the enterprise -- and then craft technology strategies to meet those objectives. June 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM makes tape density breakthrough IBM researchers have made a breakthrough in magnetic tape data density they say will help secure the media's destiny. May 16, 7:42 a.m. PDT CA extends tape encryption to mainframes CA will launch new software on Monday that aims to ease tape encryption and key management for mainframe users, the company said. May 11, 12:52 p.m. PDT Quantum to buy rival storage company ADIC Storage company Quantum Corp. said Tuesday it plans to purchase rival tape vendor Advanced Digital Information Corp. for approximately US$770 million. May 2, 3:42 p.m. PDT Sun rolls out storage products, strategy Sun Microsystems continued Tuesday to integrate technologies gained from its $4.1 billion purchase of StorageTek last year and sought to clarify its overall strategy for storing, managing and securing data throughout the enterprise. May 2, 11:43 a.m. PDT Top six steps toward disaster-recovery I recently got to write a fun piece for InfoWorld called "Stupid user tricks" about protecting your network from human error. Researching the article revealed to me how many variables folks tend to miss when running a network, as well as when planning to protect and recover that network. (By the way, if you were one of the folks who submitted anecdotes for this article, check out the SMB IT blog to see whether you’re on the list for a free InfoWorld backpack.) April 13, 3:00 a.m. PDT Exabyte stretches the tape drive A new tape drive from Exabyte promises to ease the growing pains of the small company that one day realizes it has more data to back up than can fit on a single tape. The VXA-172, which Exabyte began shipping at the end of February, has the unique feature of being expandable. You can purchase a starter unit capped at 172GB (compressed), and later, when your mountain of data outstrips that capacity, you can buy a license to expand the capacity to 320GB. No need to buy new tape drives or jump to a new tape format. March 6, 3:00 a.m. PST Quantum, StorageTek end patent fight Storage rivals Quantum and Sun Microsystems subsidiary StorageTek have settled their three-year patent dispute and entered into a cross-licensing agreement, according to a statement issued Wednesday. March 1, 8:12 a.m. PST Communications panel studies lessons of Katrina An independent panel to study the effects of Hurricane Katrina on communications networks, convened by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), met for the first time Monday. January 30, 2:10 p.m. PST Microsoft generates mild enterprise buzz at CES I'm still in bandages with several therapy sessions left to go, but I made it back from CES 2006 alive. For those who didn't go (and it seems like most of you did), the show was huge. Think Comdex during its heyday, just bigger. I went on the cut-rate special, which meant taking a cheap flight via US Airways and staying in a house with some of InfoWorld Senior Contributing Editor Brian Chee's buddies, who turned out to all be Jesuit priests. Fun bunch of guys -- and amazing drinkers, too. (Padre, thanks again for the berth.) January 12, 3:00 a.m. PST 2006 Technology of the Year Awards: The winners' list See correction at end of article January 2, 3:00 a.m. PST Storage vendors move beyond blocks and LUNs No single storage technology stole the spotlight in 2005, but the year was nonetheless an exciting one that featured new products in areas such as data protection and virtualization as well as important developments in disks, tapes, and switches. January 2, 3:00 a.m. PST Top technologies of the year Welcome to our first issue of the year. For those of you who took a break, re-entry into the heady universe of work may be a bit discombobulating. Fortunately, last Saturday, the world’s ever-considerate timekeepers saw fit to give us an extra sliver of time -- a leap second-- to prep for the new year. And now, with the pop of the cork (or was that the buzz of a pager?), we’re ready to herald 2006, a potential banner year for the enterprise. January 2, 3:00 a.m. PST HP’s VTL sticks to the basics I am not going to join the misguided gang cheering the death of tape -- tape is alive and well, as the relentless flow of new products proves. But CTOs have significantly reduced the cartridge’s sphere of influence in favor of the more flexible, faster, and less expensive VTL (virtual tape library) approach to backups. October 17, 3:00 a.m. PDT Hard disks: the autumn years I once reviewed a RAM-based storage device, a huge rack-mounted backplane equipped with memory cards and an SCSI interface. It was hot, loud, and expensive, but I was convinced I had the future roaring away in my living room. October 12, 3:00 a.m. PDT Quantum puts faith in tape I was fairly certain I knew what an upcoming chat with Quantum would focus on. I was expecting to hear more about SDLT (super digital linear tape), the next generation of their high-end tape that, according to previous conversations, the company should release sometime this year. September 15, 4:00 a.m. PDT Taiwanese DRAM maker ups equipment spending Taiwanese DRAM (dynamic RAM) chip maker ProMOS Technologies Inc. plans to spend $850 million on new plants and equipment next year, mainly advanced 12-inch (300-millimeter) wafer production equipment, an executive said Thursday. August 4, 2:35 a.m. PDT Zetera: Storage at the speed of light Once you’ve been on the teams that invented the drive controller standards used by billions of machines, it’s a tough achievement to top. So when Bill Babbitt, Bill Frank, and Tom Ludwig of Zetera created a new network storage paradigm, they simply got rid of controllers altogether. August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT Bedraggled Bobster discovers blind dates and bad diets So I had lunch with the social-networking diva last week. She’s on a diet where she only eats foods beginning with the letter Q. Looks like I may be eating a lot of quiche, quesadillas, and Quaker Oats -- she’s darned qute. June 17, 5:00 a.m. PDT Peering into the Big Blue haze As Lenovo completes its acquisition of IBM’s PC division, I’m set to squirt a few more tears for lost future generations of ThinkPad excellence. Rumor has it, however, that there’s still at least one generation of Big Blue-manufactured Thinkies on the way, and among these we may even find a tablet. Yowza! May 5, 5:00 a.m. PDT HP, Quantum represent latest tape technology Although various industry pundits have repeatedly predicted the imminent death of tape drives, tape backups are still irreplaceable in many business-continuity strategies. Backing up to disks may cut down on downtime, but it’s no substitute for low-cost, long-term data storage and archiving. March 18, 3:00 p.m. PST IBM refreshes storage hardware, software IBM has enhanced its ILM (information lifecycle management) offerings with new hardware and software aimed at better managing information from the time it is created to when it is disposed. February 18, 2:25 p.m. PST Service is new tale of the tape As companies move to consolidate tape and disk storage systems, tape storage vendors are offering additional options to increase the value and flexibility of their systems. February 7, 3:00 p.m. PST CryptoStor combines storage, security NeoScale Systems on Monday announced its CryptoStor for Tape 700, a new family of tape media security appliances that help organizations achieve information privacy and regulatory compliance by dynamically compressing, encrypting, and digitally signing data as it is written to tape libraries or virtual tape systems. January 31, 9:05 a.m. PST Backing into disaster “What is the best way to fire half my IT staff with minimal disruption?” It’s not often that I receive calls asking me questions as pointed and desperate as this one, but I got just such a call from a friend of a friend who recently had been given the responsibility of running IT at her company. Although she doesn’t come from a purely technical background, she knows enough to understand her situation is dire. Four months of company e-mail has been lost and simply can’t be recovered by the IT staff. They have tried everything, and she’s ready to pull the plug on those involved — and I really can’t blame her. Sometimes bad things happen in IT, but such a massive failure is beyond the pale. January 28, 3:00 p.m. PST Fibre Channel still rules the SAN If you were expecting breathtaking new storage technologies to appear, 2004 was probably a disappointment. But if you were looking for better storage solutions at lower prices, then it was your kind of year. December 30, 3:00 p.m. PST IBM researchers eye 100TB tape drive ALMADEN, CALIFORNIA -- IBM has begun work on new technologies designed to boost the capacity of tape storage devices by 250 times. Using "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the company's microprocessor division, researchers say they expect to one day build cartridges that can store as much as 100TB of data. December 17, 4:43 a.m. PST IBM invigorates LTO tape storage LTO (linear tape open)-based drives are invigorating the tape storage market. New third-generation LTO drives from Certance and IBM are powering the trend. November 29, 3:00 p.m. PST Exabyte adds new tape storage Exabyte has announced the release of the Magnum 1X7 LTO Autoloader, a 2U, rack-mountable, automated backup and restore system for less that $5,000. November 9, 11:58 a.m. PST Fixing what's wrong with backup It's no secret that the old-fashioned approach to data protection – backing up copies to tape -- often can't keep pace with the disproportionate information growth faced by many companies. September 24, 3:00 p.m. PDT Sony E1300 tape drive sates hunger for large servings of storage As do other vendors of tape storage drives and media, Sony faces the reduced market appeal of tape-based data protection. Relentless increases in the demand for storage capacity, combined with the availability of ever faster, disk-based alternatives have resulted in waning customer interest. August 6, 3:00 p.m. PDT StorageTek's new tape rack: same size, double capacity Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) has produced a new 100TB tape library that slots into a standard rack size but provides twice as much capacity as competing products. July 1, 8:00 a.m. PDT Research Report: Enterprise storage Like the rest of the world, InfoWorld readers are spending a little less and expecting a lot more from their technology. That message comes across loud and clear in the results of this year's survey of readers who are involved in evaluating or purchasing storage solutions. Rather than increasing their investment in storage, our respondents seem determined to get more from what they've already got. May 28, 3:00 p.m. PDT Please, no more storage forecasts In my line of work, having timely information is essential. We all like to know about new products sooner rather than later, and especially before they are released. May 7, 3:00 p.m. PDT A MAID for your archives Although it rhymes with RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks), MAID (massive array of inactive disks) is a completely new approach to storing data. It's an approach that is carving out its own niche among tape-based and disk-based data-protection solutions. (For a primer on MAID and some of the players in the market, see "MAID technology challenges tape.") April 30, 3:00 p.m. PDT IVDR removable hard disk drives to finally appear LONDON - A removable hard disk drive system first unveiled more than two years ago will see its commercial launch later this month. IO Data Device Inc., a Tokyo-based manufacturer of computer peripherals, will put on sale a drive and disk based on the IVDR (Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage) standard in late-April, it said Monday. April 12, 2:22 p.m. PDT Intel: Itanium, Xeon to be interchangeable SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In a move to drive down the cost of systems built with its Itanium 2 microprocessor, Intel Corp. plans to make future versions of its Xeon and Itanium processors interchangeable at the socket level, the company confirmed on Tuesday. April 6, 2:05 p.m. PDT No printer is an island Every printer is mission critical to someone, making it yet another potential emergency for IT administrators. Multiply that by dozens or hundreds of printers across on enterprise, and it's a wonder that IT groups have time left for anything besides empty paper trays, toner refills, and blinking error messages on control panels. That's where management software comes in, offering desktop and Web-based apps to monitor and configure machines, set e-mail alerts for maintenance, and collect data on print jobs for accounting, analysis, or consumables tracking, all from the comfort of a workstation. April 2, 3:00 p.m. PST Linux beats a path to the datacenter “The beaver is out of detox.” February 2, 6:00 a.m. PST > Hardware > Storage hardware > Storage > Storage hardware > Storage |
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