Thursday, December 24, 2009

Join the InfoStor Group on LinkedIn!

December 24, 2009 -- Many of you are already following InfoStor on Twitter for up-to-the-minute breaking news and information about the data storage industry. What you may not know is that InfoStor now has a LinkedIn Group up and running where end users and experts can meet to discuss trends, technologies and the issues facing storage professionals.

Join the InfoStor Group on LinkedIn for daily news updates, lab reviews, guest blogs, and to add your two cents to the discussion threads.

Speaking of guest blogs, Editor-in-Chief Dave Simpson is now soliciting end user bloggers for InfoStor.com. More information on guest blogger opportunities can be found on LinkedIn. Feel free to drop Dave a line and make your voice heard!

Happy Holidays from the InfoStor team!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Dell, KOM Networks are turning old storage into food

December 16, 2009 -- KOM Networks is teaming up with Dell and recycling partner the Technology Conservation Group (TCG) to turn optical jukeboxes and other storage gear into food for needy children.

The companies have announced the "Junk-A-Juke" program, which provides free archive and storage systems in exchange for donated end-of-life optical jukeboxes or legacy storage devices.

Under the program, the vendors will collect and recycle obsolete and legacy storage equipment and donate all the money generated from raw materials to Feed The Children.

In exchange for the older equipment, KOM offers a new Dell Powered KOMpliance Archive (based on the Dell PowerVault NX3000 NAS) with equal capacity, an enterprise class server and archive solution free-of-charge with a three year maintenance agreement.

The goal, according to KOM, is to collect and recycle enough hardware to feed one million children.

TCG will pick up and track each piece of equipment through destruction to ensure that nothing ends up in a landfill. TCG is an ISO registered recycler of electronic scrap and a member of NAID, the National Association for Information Destruction, a trade association providing the standards and ethics for the information destruction industry to ensure total compliant destruction of functional drives.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Gartner: External disk storage market recovering

December 3, 2009 -- Storage vendors have something to be thankful for as yet another indicator that the storage market is rebounding from the economic downturn has emerged. Gartner's latest research shows there are signs of recovery in the external controller-based disk storage market.

According to Gartner, worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage revenue totaled more than $3.9 billion in the third quarter of 2009, a 7.3% decline from the same period last year.

In a statement from principal research analyst for Gartner's global Storage Quarterly Statistics program, Donna Taylor, the economic downturn's impact on the disk array storage market is slowly subsiding.

She says, "The year-over-year decline of 7.3% indicates that the economic downturn's impact on the disk array storage market is loosening its grip. The prior two quarters in 2009 showed declines in the double digits. This is good news for storage vendors, because it's the first sign of a light at the end of the tunnel."

EMC still leads the pack with 26.7% revenue market share. IBM takes second place followed by HP, Hitachi and Dell.

For the full list of market leaders, check out Gartner's website.

IDC issued its 2Q numbers in September, which revealed similar signs of recovery in both the storage hardware and software markets.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker showed year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09) with revenues of $2.8 billion, representing –9.8% growth over the same quarter one year ago.

On the hardware front, worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posting a year-over-year decline of 18.3% in the 2Q09, totaling $4.1 billion, according to the IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.

In addition, a recent survey of 47 enterprise VARs conducted by Robert W. Baird & Co. showed that VARs are upbeat about fourth quarter prospects. See Dave Simpson's blog "VARs upbeat about Q4."