April 7, 2010 -- NetApp is advancing its efforts in the cloud storage market with the acquisition of Bycast, a developer of object-based storage virtualization software that turns multiple storage devices across geographically dispersed locations into a single pool for storing fixed content data.
NetApp announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Bycast for an undisclosed sum. According to NetApp, the plan is to expand NetApp's reach in unified storage by adding object-based storage software to the mix.
NetApp claims that Bycast's products will strengthen its ability too serve vertical markets such as digital media, Web 2.0, healthcare, and cloud services providers.
"The addition of Bycast's products enables NetApp to offer our enterprise customers and service provider partners a complementary solution that enables them to efficiently build and manage a very large-scale global repository of data central to many IT-as-a-service offerings," Manish Goel, executive vice president, Product Operations, NetApp, said in a press release today.
Bycast's flagship product is its StorageGRID storage virtualization software. StorageGRID virtualizes heterogeneous storage devices – everything from high performance disk to tape – and runs on industry standard servers and provides a virtualization layer that sits between applications and the underlying storage hardware.
Applications store and retrieve data from the StorageGRID grid using CIFS, NFS, and HTTP. The system manages stored data using configurable policies that determine the degree of replication, geographic placement, and the storage tier on which data is stored.
Bycast positions StorageGRID as a cloud storage platform for service providers based on its ability to deliver multi-tenant digital archives across multiple sites.
Bycast claims to have about 250 customers under its belt and has OEM partnerships with HP and IBM, both of which sell the StorageGRID software under their own brands.
HP and Bycast have a strategic OEM partnership focused on medical image storage and archiving under the HP brand Medical Archive Solution (MAS).
IBM's System Storage Multilevel Grid Access Manager Software (Grid Access Manager Software) is based on StorageGRID and the IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) combines IBM's TotalStorage and IBM System x servers plus the Grid Access Manager Software. In addition, IBM also uses Bycast's File System Gateway technology to provide a standard CIFS/NFS interface for the IBM System Storage DR550.
According to NetApp, the company will determine whether it will continue the existing Bycast partnerships as it works through the closing of the transaction. The deal is expected to close in May 2010, subject to closing conditions.
According to an e-mail statement to InfoStor, NetApp plans to keep "most of the Bycast team" and does not plan to lay off existing NetApp employees because of the acquisition. NetApp is planning "to eliminate a small number of positions at Bycast. While Bycast employees' roles are not changing as a result of the acquisition, Bycast groups are being integrated into NetApp's organization."
The company plans to turn Bycast's Vancouver headquarters into a technology center for responsible for existing Bycast products and future product development.
Bycast's engineering and product management groups will report to product operations, solutions specialists will report to field operations, sales resources will report to sales, and so on.
NetApp announced its cloud storage intentions earlier this year when it formed a cloud partnership with Cisco and VMware (see Dave Simpson's article "NetApp, Cisco, VMware collaborate on the cloud").
The partnership is based on developing the Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture, a reference design with the goal of enhanced security in cloud environments.
Dell also entered the object-based storage fray recently with last month's debut of the Dell DX Object Storage Solution, a new homegrown system that uses metadata to store fixed digital content in a scalable, flat address space (see "Dell jumps into object-based storage").
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Microsoft extols the storage virtues of Exchange 2010
March 31, 2010 -- Microsoft is out to dispel some of the storage myths surrounding Exchange 2010 and promote the use of low-cost disks to reduce storage costs while actually improving the availability of Exchange.
According to a recent blog posted by Microsoft's Exchange guru, Astrid McClean, the software giant has been getting some interesting feedback regarding the storage capabilities – or lack thereof – of the company's the latest version of the company's Exchange e-mail application.
McClean maintains that not only does Exchange 2010 not require high performance storage, but also that IT admins can actually give users bigger mailboxes using low-cost storage systems.
Microsoft claims that built-in features including high availability and disaster recovery, storage system improvements, and self-healing from disk faults let customers use large, inexpensive disks in configurations that maximize data redundancy.
Some of the more interesting tidbits from Astrid's blog:
Exchange 2010 doesn't support NAS…but it does support a large range of storage options including SAN and DAS. Depending on your high availability model, storage can be configured using RAID or RAID-less (JBOD) storage. Different customers will require different solutions based on their requirements, but everyone has the ability to deploy large mailboxes at low cost.
Exchange 2010 supports up to 100,000 items per folder, up from 20,000 in Exchange 2007. In addition to this, Outlook 2007 SP1 Feb09 update, Outlook 2007 SP2 & Outlook 2010 provide good performance for Cached Exchange Mode for mailboxes up to 10 GB in size, and even larger (25GB) using faster disks like 7.2K drives or SSD.
McClean also says the Exchange 2010 store was improved to support very large mailboxes (100 GB+).
InfoStor conducted an interview with McClean prior to the launch of Exchange 2010 outlining some of the new storage features (see "Q&A: The storage implications of Exchange 2010").
In addition to McClean's blog, Microsoft has published a white paper outlining the storage features of Exchange 2010.
In related news, EMC recently became the first storage vendor to take advantage of an Exchange API that allows for integrated SAN-based replication with Exchange 2010 (see "EMC integrates replication tools with Exchange 2010").
According to a recent blog posted by Microsoft's Exchange guru, Astrid McClean, the software giant has been getting some interesting feedback regarding the storage capabilities – or lack thereof – of the company's the latest version of the company's Exchange e-mail application.
McClean maintains that not only does Exchange 2010 not require high performance storage, but also that IT admins can actually give users bigger mailboxes using low-cost storage systems.
Microsoft claims that built-in features including high availability and disaster recovery, storage system improvements, and self-healing from disk faults let customers use large, inexpensive disks in configurations that maximize data redundancy.
Some of the more interesting tidbits from Astrid's blog:
Exchange 2010 doesn't support NAS…but it does support a large range of storage options including SAN and DAS. Depending on your high availability model, storage can be configured using RAID or RAID-less (JBOD) storage. Different customers will require different solutions based on their requirements, but everyone has the ability to deploy large mailboxes at low cost.
Exchange 2010 supports up to 100,000 items per folder, up from 20,000 in Exchange 2007. In addition to this, Outlook 2007 SP1 Feb09 update, Outlook 2007 SP2 & Outlook 2010 provide good performance for Cached Exchange Mode for mailboxes up to 10 GB in size, and even larger (25GB) using faster disks like 7.2K drives or SSD.
McClean also says the Exchange 2010 store was improved to support very large mailboxes (100 GB+).
InfoStor conducted an interview with McClean prior to the launch of Exchange 2010 outlining some of the new storage features (see "Q&A: The storage implications of Exchange 2010").
In addition to McClean's blog, Microsoft has published a white paper outlining the storage features of Exchange 2010.
In related news, EMC recently became the first storage vendor to take advantage of an Exchange API that allows for integrated SAN-based replication with Exchange 2010 (see "EMC integrates replication tools with Exchange 2010").
Friday, March 19, 2010
Fibre Channel free-for-all
March 19, 2010 -- The Fibre Channel SAN market is experiencing record growth and, as it does, the main players in Fibre Channel networking are fighting harder than ever for market share as converged networking gains traction.
Recently released data from the Dell'Oro Group shows that the Fibre Channel SAN market experienced a broad-based, record sequential revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, with both Fibre Channel switch and host bus adapter segments posting large increases.
According to the firm's "SAN Quarterly Report," Brocade, Cisco, Emulex and QLogic, had "strong sequential performances that helped propel the market to expand more than 15% quarter-over-quarter."
Seamus Crehan, vice president of Dell'Oro Group, said "the server upgrade cycle that started in the second quarter of 2009 was…a key driver of the Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter growth, especially 8Gbps."
Even more interesting is expected impact of unified fabric/converged networking technologies, specifically Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) running on converged network adapters (CNA).
The Dell'Oro Group's "SAN 5-Year Forecast Report," predicts that FCoE will be "a major growth contributor to both the Fibre Channel HBA market and the Ethernet network adapter market."
In a recent discussion about the HP-Cisco divorce, Taneja Group founder and consulting analyst Arun Taneja said converged networking is creating its own set of wars in the IT industry.
"The industry has become smart enough to say that Fibre Channel is not going anywhere. It's a sacred technology, but if you give me the same Fibre Channel that I am used to today and you want to put it on a different fabric, that's okay with me – hence Fibre Channel over Ethernet," he said. "Two worlds have collided in the form of one card called a converged network adapter that can act as a NIC for Ethernet traffic and support iSCSI or FCoE for Fibre Channel traffic. Broadcomm, Intel, Emulex, and QLogic are all vying for that market."
Taneja said customers are starting to take sides and that the market me be ripe for vendor consolidation.
"The winds are blowing fast and furious for Emulex and QLogic at the expense of Broadcomm and Intel," he said. "Ultimately, the one thing I can see that would bring everything back to a calm state is if Intel was to buy QLogic and Broadcomm buys Emulex."
Check out InfoStor's recent coverage of the Fibre Channel SAN market and FCoE:
HP to resell QLogic's enterprise FC switches
EMC taps QLogic for 8Gbps FC switches
Emulex: Running the Table at HP?
FCoE CNAs: HP/IBM tap Emulex, Cisco taps QLogic
Broadcom makes hostile bid for Emulex
Broadcom Enters Converged Network Adapter War
QLogic sues Emulex, but not over technology
Cisco-HP partnership implodes
Analysts weigh in on HP-Cisco breakup
Recently released data from the Dell'Oro Group shows that the Fibre Channel SAN market experienced a broad-based, record sequential revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, with both Fibre Channel switch and host bus adapter segments posting large increases.
According to the firm's "SAN Quarterly Report," Brocade, Cisco, Emulex and QLogic, had "strong sequential performances that helped propel the market to expand more than 15% quarter-over-quarter."
Seamus Crehan, vice president of Dell'Oro Group, said "the server upgrade cycle that started in the second quarter of 2009 was…a key driver of the Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter growth, especially 8Gbps."
Even more interesting is expected impact of unified fabric/converged networking technologies, specifically Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) running on converged network adapters (CNA).
The Dell'Oro Group's "SAN 5-Year Forecast Report," predicts that FCoE will be "a major growth contributor to both the Fibre Channel HBA market and the Ethernet network adapter market."
In a recent discussion about the HP-Cisco divorce, Taneja Group founder and consulting analyst Arun Taneja said converged networking is creating its own set of wars in the IT industry.
"The industry has become smart enough to say that Fibre Channel is not going anywhere. It's a sacred technology, but if you give me the same Fibre Channel that I am used to today and you want to put it on a different fabric, that's okay with me – hence Fibre Channel over Ethernet," he said. "Two worlds have collided in the form of one card called a converged network adapter that can act as a NIC for Ethernet traffic and support iSCSI or FCoE for Fibre Channel traffic. Broadcomm, Intel, Emulex, and QLogic are all vying for that market."
Taneja said customers are starting to take sides and that the market me be ripe for vendor consolidation.
"The winds are blowing fast and furious for Emulex and QLogic at the expense of Broadcomm and Intel," he said. "Ultimately, the one thing I can see that would bring everything back to a calm state is if Intel was to buy QLogic and Broadcomm buys Emulex."
Check out InfoStor's recent coverage of the Fibre Channel SAN market and FCoE:
HP to resell QLogic's enterprise FC switches
EMC taps QLogic for 8Gbps FC switches
Emulex: Running the Table at HP?
FCoE CNAs: HP/IBM tap Emulex, Cisco taps QLogic
Broadcom makes hostile bid for Emulex
Broadcom Enters Converged Network Adapter War
QLogic sues Emulex, but not over technology
Cisco-HP partnership implodes
Analysts weigh in on HP-Cisco breakup
Thursday, March 11, 2010
NAS grows as external controller-based disk market slides
March 11, 2010 -- Unstructured data is becoming the reigning storage hog in the data center as the network-attached storage (NAS) market continues to grow, while the market for block-access, controller-based disk arrays continues to decline, according to the latest numbers from Gartner.
According to the research firm's latest report ("Quarterly Statistics: Disk Array Storage, All Regions, All Countries, 4Q09 Update") the external controller-based (ECB) disk storage market took a severe hit as the economic downturn whacked the market for an 8.6% year-over-year decline from $18 billion in 2008 to $16.3 billion in 2009 – the first annual decline for the market since 2002.
Gartner research vice president, Roger Cox, says the large monolithic/frame-based disk array market declined 21.1%, and for the first time since Gartner has been reporting on the ECB disk storage market, the segment represented less than 30% of the total market.
Cox says, "This result, in part, reflects the advancements that the lower-cost modular disk array systems have made in performance and capacity scalability, as well as robust data services associated with local and remote replication."
Gartner says unstructured data growth is boosting the NAS market as the segment grew 1.4% in '09, while the block-access modular ECB disk storage segment declined 2.8%. The special purpose disk archiving system segment experienced a big drop-off, falling 31.6% in revenue.
EMC remained the market leader in 2009, in part because of its leadership in the monolithic/frame-based, block access modular disk array and special-purpose disk archiving storage systems markets and the acquisition of Data Domain. IBM is second in market share, growing 11.9% in the fourth quarter, according to the report.
Gartner ECB disk storage reports reflect hardware-only revenue, as well as hardware revenue associated with financial leases and managed services.
On a related note, IDC recently released its latest Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker report that shows the external and internal disk array markets experienced the first year-over-year growth since the third quarter of 2008. The report also states that the NAS and iSCSI SAN array markets posted modest year-over-year growth (See Dave Simpson's latest blog: "Who are the top 5 array vendors?").
For more info on the ECB disk storage market, check out the full report on Gartner's website. The report includes vendor market share by data access method, price band, channel and operating system segmentation.
According to the research firm's latest report ("Quarterly Statistics: Disk Array Storage, All Regions, All Countries, 4Q09 Update") the external controller-based (ECB) disk storage market took a severe hit as the economic downturn whacked the market for an 8.6% year-over-year decline from $18 billion in 2008 to $16.3 billion in 2009 – the first annual decline for the market since 2002.
Gartner research vice president, Roger Cox, says the large monolithic/frame-based disk array market declined 21.1%, and for the first time since Gartner has been reporting on the ECB disk storage market, the segment represented less than 30% of the total market.
Cox says, "This result, in part, reflects the advancements that the lower-cost modular disk array systems have made in performance and capacity scalability, as well as robust data services associated with local and remote replication."
Gartner says unstructured data growth is boosting the NAS market as the segment grew 1.4% in '09, while the block-access modular ECB disk storage segment declined 2.8%. The special purpose disk archiving system segment experienced a big drop-off, falling 31.6% in revenue.
EMC remained the market leader in 2009, in part because of its leadership in the monolithic/frame-based, block access modular disk array and special-purpose disk archiving storage systems markets and the acquisition of Data Domain. IBM is second in market share, growing 11.9% in the fourth quarter, according to the report.
Gartner ECB disk storage reports reflect hardware-only revenue, as well as hardware revenue associated with financial leases and managed services.
On a related note, IDC recently released its latest Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker report that shows the external and internal disk array markets experienced the first year-over-year growth since the third quarter of 2008. The report also states that the NAS and iSCSI SAN array markets posted modest year-over-year growth (See Dave Simpson's latest blog: "Who are the top 5 array vendors?").
For more info on the ECB disk storage market, check out the full report on Gartner's website. The report includes vendor market share by data access method, price band, channel and operating system segmentation.
Friday, February 26, 2010
SGI snaps up Copan's assets for $2 million
February 26, 2010 -- In a deal that flew under the radar, SGI announced this week that it has purchased what is left of defunct virtual tape library (VTL) vendor Copan Systems for a price of about $2 million – that's right – $2 million.
SGI gobbled up Copan's assets in a private foreclosure sale from Copan's secured creditors. SGI did not assume any debt of Copan in the acquisition and assumed a limited number of liabilities.
Copan's claim to fame was its energy-efficient Enterprise MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology for long-term storage of persistent data and its ability to power down disk drives when not in use.
"In my mind, they were a bit of a one-trick pony in that they had a purpose-built platform that incorporated MAID with drive spin-down," says Forrester Research senior analyst Andrew Reichman.
According to Reichman's research, the power benefits didn't match to cost of the system.
"It didn't take off because the power cost of 100TB of storage is about 1% of acquiring that 100TB. It's a drop in the bucket," he says. "What's more, most of the data center buyers are different than the facilities team and therefore don't pay the power bill. That put a barrier in place."
The surprising piece of this puzzle is the price tag. Two million seems a bit low for a company that raised more than $100 million in five rounds of funding, the most recent of which came about a year ago. That's a lot of money lost for Copan's investors.
Reichman believes SGI bought Copan at a bargain basement price in the hopes of using the technology down the line.
Copan's offices in Longmont, Colo., will be retained, and SGI "intends to hire select Copan employees," according to the company.
Reichman thinks Copan customers should start thinking about migrating their data.
"I've talked to customers and, not surprisingly, they're concerned. It's a bad situation to be in. I hate to leave gear with usable life on the table, but my message to [users] is to start with a migration plan now to move off of the [platform]," he says.
SGI's CEO, Mark J. Barrenechea, outlined its plans for the Copan technology earlier this week in a letter to customers on the SGI website. Barrenechea wrote:
"The Copan assets will allow us to provide our customers access to Copan's approach to data backup, recovery, and active archive. Copan products are based on an Enterprise MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) platform, which is ideally suited of solutions like Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL), Disk-to-Disk (D2D) backup and HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management). When integrated into the SGI InfiniteStorage Total Control Suite with software like DMF and LiveArc, as well as our high performance NAS, SAN and bulk storage solutions, SGI has increased the ability of our customers to fully exploit the value of their data."
Are you a Copan customer? Sound off! Drop us a line with your questions or concerns.
SGI gobbled up Copan's assets in a private foreclosure sale from Copan's secured creditors. SGI did not assume any debt of Copan in the acquisition and assumed a limited number of liabilities.
Copan's claim to fame was its energy-efficient Enterprise MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology for long-term storage of persistent data and its ability to power down disk drives when not in use.
"In my mind, they were a bit of a one-trick pony in that they had a purpose-built platform that incorporated MAID with drive spin-down," says Forrester Research senior analyst Andrew Reichman.
According to Reichman's research, the power benefits didn't match to cost of the system.
"It didn't take off because the power cost of 100TB of storage is about 1% of acquiring that 100TB. It's a drop in the bucket," he says. "What's more, most of the data center buyers are different than the facilities team and therefore don't pay the power bill. That put a barrier in place."
The surprising piece of this puzzle is the price tag. Two million seems a bit low for a company that raised more than $100 million in five rounds of funding, the most recent of which came about a year ago. That's a lot of money lost for Copan's investors.
Reichman believes SGI bought Copan at a bargain basement price in the hopes of using the technology down the line.
Copan's offices in Longmont, Colo., will be retained, and SGI "intends to hire select Copan employees," according to the company.
Reichman thinks Copan customers should start thinking about migrating their data.
"I've talked to customers and, not surprisingly, they're concerned. It's a bad situation to be in. I hate to leave gear with usable life on the table, but my message to [users] is to start with a migration plan now to move off of the [platform]," he says.
SGI's CEO, Mark J. Barrenechea, outlined its plans for the Copan technology earlier this week in a letter to customers on the SGI website. Barrenechea wrote:
"The Copan assets will allow us to provide our customers access to Copan's approach to data backup, recovery, and active archive. Copan products are based on an Enterprise MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) platform, which is ideally suited of solutions like Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL), Disk-to-Disk (D2D) backup and HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management). When integrated into the SGI InfiniteStorage Total Control Suite with software like DMF and LiveArc, as well as our high performance NAS, SAN and bulk storage solutions, SGI has increased the ability of our customers to fully exploit the value of their data."
Are you a Copan customer? Sound off! Drop us a line with your questions or concerns.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Cisco-HP partnership implodes
February 19, 2010 -- Months of rumored bad blood between Cisco and HP has finally boiled over as InfoStor has learned that Cisco Systems will not renew its System Integrator contract with HP.
Citing "changes in the IT landscape and the evolving role of the network and the implications to our partnering strategy with HP," Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization, said Cisco recently notified HP that it will not renew its System Integrator contract when it expires on April 30, 2010, resulting in HP no longer being a Cisco Certified Channel or Global Service Alliance partner.
The statement was made in a video blog posted on Cisco's website late last night and appears to be the result of a flurry of activity sparked by John Furrier's siliconAngle blog yesterday morning.
Upon reading John's blog, I fired off questions to both Cisco and HP. While Cisco did not respond directly to my questions, it's safe to say Goodwin answered them – and then some – in his video missive.
Goodwin went on to say "[Cisco is] taking this action to be transparent to both partners and customers – we will compete with HP for future business."
HP supplied me with a written statement late yesterday. However, in all fairness, they had yet to see Goodwin's blog on Cisco.com.
HP's statement is as follows:
"History has proven that customers and the market demand both co-opetition and collaboration between IT vendors. Most major players compete in one deal, and partner in others to best serve the client's needs. We do not believe it is in the customer's best interest to take a proprietary stance.
We will provide clients with consulting, integration, management and support services for their heterogeneous environments and ensure that our hardware and software platforms are optimized for all leading networking platforms.
Our strategy and platforms will continue to be market driven to create advantage today and into the future for our clients."
So what does this mean for customers?
Goodwin said Cisco has reached out to HP to start discussing a "new agreement that ensures business continuity for existing customers and better reflects the current state of our relationship."
He also maintained that Cisco will honor existing customer service contracts with HP for their duration.
"Our commitment is clear: we will continue to work with HP wherever our customers expect it and where it makes sense for our business," he said.
A brief history of the HP-Cisco shadow war
Cisco seems to have started this tussle with its entry into the server market in March 2009 with the debut of Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), which combines compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources in a single system based on a new line of blade servers developed by Cisco.
Cisco's move into the server market caused some waves across the industry and left many partners – most notably HP – with a lot of questions.
Cisco added to the UCS platform last October with the launch of UCS rack-mount servers, memory extension technology, and a line of converged network adapters (CNAs).
Subsequently, HP made some big moves of its own. Last November, the company put its own twist on unified computing with the announcement of the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture and a set of associated services and partner offerings that create a virtualized, on-demand data center.
HP then added to its own arsenal with the $2.7 billion to acquisition of networking vendor 3Com, as HP continued on its path toward data center convergence.
The latest move from HP was yesterday's announcement of a new deal with QLogic, under which HP will is now selling QLogic's 5800V and 5802V Series stackable 8Gbps Fibre Channel switches.
What's your take on this whole mess? Drop us a line: kevink@pennwell.com.
Citing "changes in the IT landscape and the evolving role of the network and the implications to our partnering strategy with HP," Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization, said Cisco recently notified HP that it will not renew its System Integrator contract when it expires on April 30, 2010, resulting in HP no longer being a Cisco Certified Channel or Global Service Alliance partner.
The statement was made in a video blog posted on Cisco's website late last night and appears to be the result of a flurry of activity sparked by John Furrier's siliconAngle blog yesterday morning.
Upon reading John's blog, I fired off questions to both Cisco and HP. While Cisco did not respond directly to my questions, it's safe to say Goodwin answered them – and then some – in his video missive.
Goodwin went on to say "[Cisco is] taking this action to be transparent to both partners and customers – we will compete with HP for future business."
HP supplied me with a written statement late yesterday. However, in all fairness, they had yet to see Goodwin's blog on Cisco.com.
HP's statement is as follows:
"History has proven that customers and the market demand both co-opetition and collaboration between IT vendors. Most major players compete in one deal, and partner in others to best serve the client's needs. We do not believe it is in the customer's best interest to take a proprietary stance.
We will provide clients with consulting, integration, management and support services for their heterogeneous environments and ensure that our hardware and software platforms are optimized for all leading networking platforms.
Our strategy and platforms will continue to be market driven to create advantage today and into the future for our clients."
So what does this mean for customers?
Goodwin said Cisco has reached out to HP to start discussing a "new agreement that ensures business continuity for existing customers and better reflects the current state of our relationship."
He also maintained that Cisco will honor existing customer service contracts with HP for their duration.
"Our commitment is clear: we will continue to work with HP wherever our customers expect it and where it makes sense for our business," he said.
A brief history of the HP-Cisco shadow war
Cisco seems to have started this tussle with its entry into the server market in March 2009 with the debut of Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), which combines compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources in a single system based on a new line of blade servers developed by Cisco.
Cisco's move into the server market caused some waves across the industry and left many partners – most notably HP – with a lot of questions.
Cisco added to the UCS platform last October with the launch of UCS rack-mount servers, memory extension technology, and a line of converged network adapters (CNAs).
Subsequently, HP made some big moves of its own. Last November, the company put its own twist on unified computing with the announcement of the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture and a set of associated services and partner offerings that create a virtualized, on-demand data center.
HP then added to its own arsenal with the $2.7 billion to acquisition of networking vendor 3Com, as HP continued on its path toward data center convergence.
The latest move from HP was yesterday's announcement of a new deal with QLogic, under which HP will is now selling QLogic's 5800V and 5802V Series stackable 8Gbps Fibre Channel switches.
What's your take on this whole mess? Drop us a line: kevink@pennwell.com.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Cloud computing courses cropping up
February 5, 2010 -- UC Irvine has become the latest school to add cloud computing to its curriculum as the concept continues to gain steam in the IT industry. However, the momentum of the cloud seems to be vendor-driven as recent research shows end user customers are still hesitant or unwilling to turn storage over to the cloud.
This week, the University of California, Irvine Extension announced a new eight-week online course titled "Cloud Computing," beginning Monday, April 12. According to the school, "the course was created to arm participants with an advanced level of knowledge and hands-on experience in understanding, designing and implementing a cloud-based software system."
Specifically, the course will outline current industry techniques and practices, future challenges and survey applications deployed by Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The aim is to arm students with "an understanding of cloud computing models, techniques and architectures, and its application by providers in delivering common business functions such as data storage, computing resources and messaging online."
UC Irvine is not alone. There are a wealth of cloud computing resources and courses cropping up on the Web. UC Berkeley has the cloud on its radar and IT education companies like Stratos Learning and Plularsight also offer cloud-related courses. Not to mention the storage industry's efforts including the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Cloud Storage Initiative.
It's no surprise that cloud technologies are finding their way into the realm of higher learning, but is the cloud phenomenon a result of industry hype or end user interest when it comes to cloud storage?
Editor-in-Chief Dave Simpson highlighted some interesting research from Forrester that points to the former. In his recent piece, "Survey: Users not very interested in cloud storage," Dave cites a Forrester survey that shows about 43% of the respondents said that they were categorically "not interested" in adopting pay-per-use hosted storage capacity. Another 43% said that they were interested but had no plans to implement cloud storage.
It's and interesting dichotomy. The storage pros aren't ready and have concerns about security, compliance and portability, but the vendors are all about the cloud.
There's too much invested in the cloud moniker to have it fall by the wayside in favor of some new flavor of the month, but the vendors may have to drag users into the cloud in the coming years, especially when it comes to entrusting their critical data to a hosted service. Regardless, having a cloud credential or two on the resume can't hurt.
For news and feature articles on cloud storage, visit InfoStor's cloud storage Topic Center.
This week, the University of California, Irvine Extension announced a new eight-week online course titled "Cloud Computing," beginning Monday, April 12. According to the school, "the course was created to arm participants with an advanced level of knowledge and hands-on experience in understanding, designing and implementing a cloud-based software system."
Specifically, the course will outline current industry techniques and practices, future challenges and survey applications deployed by Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The aim is to arm students with "an understanding of cloud computing models, techniques and architectures, and its application by providers in delivering common business functions such as data storage, computing resources and messaging online."
UC Irvine is not alone. There are a wealth of cloud computing resources and courses cropping up on the Web. UC Berkeley has the cloud on its radar and IT education companies like Stratos Learning and Plularsight also offer cloud-related courses. Not to mention the storage industry's efforts including the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Cloud Storage Initiative.
It's no surprise that cloud technologies are finding their way into the realm of higher learning, but is the cloud phenomenon a result of industry hype or end user interest when it comes to cloud storage?
Editor-in-Chief Dave Simpson highlighted some interesting research from Forrester that points to the former. In his recent piece, "Survey: Users not very interested in cloud storage," Dave cites a Forrester survey that shows about 43% of the respondents said that they were categorically "not interested" in adopting pay-per-use hosted storage capacity. Another 43% said that they were interested but had no plans to implement cloud storage.
It's and interesting dichotomy. The storage pros aren't ready and have concerns about security, compliance and portability, but the vendors are all about the cloud.
There's too much invested in the cloud moniker to have it fall by the wayside in favor of some new flavor of the month, but the vendors may have to drag users into the cloud in the coming years, especially when it comes to entrusting their critical data to a hosted service. Regardless, having a cloud credential or two on the resume can't hurt.
For news and feature articles on cloud storage, visit InfoStor's cloud storage Topic Center.
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