Storage mergers and acquisitions in 2008

01/08/09

For the past nine years I've kept a list of storage companies that have either folded or been acquired. I've never known what to do with the list; I just keep updating it as companies either disappear, merge or are snapped up by another vendor. A few weeks ago, I was talking to someone who said it would be interesting to chronicle these companies and do something with the list. So here it is - a list for what happened in storage in 2008 ...

Cloud computing, storage-as-a-service, solid state flash drives to thrive in 2009

01/06/09

The beginning of the New Year is normally when industry pundits make predictions of what will be big in storage in the coming year. So in that tradition, here are my predictions of what I am looking forward to hearing more about in 2009. Among the technologies in this category are cloud computing, storage-as-a-service and solid state flash drives.

Veritas aims to help reduce storage purchase costs

12/18/08

Symantec this week unveiled enhancements to its storage optimization suite of software that lets organizations reduce storage purchases as well as their operational costs.

Dell/EMC re-up storage partnership

12/16/08

Dell and EMC announced the renewal of their partnership last week as EMC held its North American Analyst Summit in Hopkinton, Mass., which I attended. The deal has been good for both the Round Rock, Texas-based computer giant and for its storage counterpart in Hopkinton. Since the companies inked their original deal in 2001, Dell has become EMC's largest reseller of storage systems.

SNIA forms new storage user group

12/11/08

A new or at least reorganized community for storage users was launched last week by the Storage Networking Industry Association. The Storage Technology Online Community (StorTOC) was formed by the End User Council of SNIA and is intended to be an online community for users of networked storage.

Intel, Hitachi GST join to make flash SSD market

12/09/08

Intel and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies teamed up last week to make flash-based solid state drives (SSD), used in computer servers and storage. Intel will be the only supplier of flash for Hitachi Data systems. The two companies will collaborate on research and development, and aim to provide the first flash SSDs in early 2010.

Sun aims to help customers meet compliance objectives through data erasure services

12/04/08

Sun last week rolled out new services meant to help customers protect their data from loss and meet compliance objectives. Sun's Data Protection Services, Data Erasure, is an onsite service that lets customers remove and destroy data in an auditable manner.

InfiniBand finds its calling

12/02/08

InfiniBand, it appears, has finally found its place as the de-facto interconnect for high-performance computing environments - that is if you believe the noise vendors are making about the interconnect that now has been around for about 9 years. Maybe it takes time for an interconnect to take off - or perhaps it is because other interconnects like Myricom's Myrinet or Quadric's QSNet have not - but now seems to be the time for InfiniBand, which performs at 40Gbps and is supported by vendors such as Mellanox, Sun, QLogic and Dell.

QLogic adds InfiniBand switch, own ASIC

11/25/08

QLogic added breath to the InfiniBand platform last week with the launch of the QLogic 12000 Series switch - the second product to use its TrueScale ASIC platform.

EMC launches Decho

11/20/08

EMC last week joined two of its startups Mozy and Pi together to form a new company called Decho that will help consumers manage their personal digital information - their digital echo.

EMC joins the cloud

11/18/08

EMC last week joined the cloud storage game with a hardware/software combination that offers massive storage capacity to Web 2.0, telecom and large enterprises who need somewhere to keep their object-based, unstructured data.

Dell to feature deduplication technology from EMC, Quantum

11/13/08

Dell last week joined the data deduplication market, promising products that use software from EMC and Quantum. The company will develop a single architecture from deduplication technology from EMC and Quantum and will make it available on its PowerVault, EqualLogic and Dell/EMC storage products. TierDisk will be the new name for the company's triumvirate of products. Dell expects to ship systems with deduplicaton capability in early 2009.

HP throws hat in storage virtualization ring

11/11/08

HP last week upped the ante on heterogeneous storage virtualization by unveiling a platform that pools storage across HP and non-HP arrays. The HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform, dubbed SVSP, is for users of Fibre Channel storage-area networks and incorporates HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) and the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA).

TimeSight aims at lifecycle management of video surveillance data

11/06/08

TimeSight Systems last week launched what could be the first lifecycle management package for video surveillance data.

Griffin-Spalding County adds enterprise backup to its SAN

11/04/08

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Griffin-Spalding County IT Director Rod Smith realized that his school system's network could have just as easily been destroyed, and its employees left without the data it uses to conduct everyday business. Without the ability to back up student information, the school system would face huge financial repercussions, because money that the system receives from the federal government is based on the availability and contents of that data.

Storage vendors enjoy strong financials

10/30/08

In spite of the financial downturn that is affecting my 401K (now probably a 2K) and my retirement plans, storage companies reported strong financial results. Among the companies reporting financial results are EMC, Compellent, Emulex and QLogic.

Hospital spins out data protection strategy

10/28/08

Andy Fuss has all the bases covered when it comes to protecting his data at Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence, R.I. Fuss, who is lead technical engineer at the medical center, installed two Data Domain DD565 Appliances in March of this year - one at the hospital and the second device at a disaster recovery site located 100 miles away.

What's hot at Storage Networking World

10/23/08

Solid state disk, data deduplication, compression and data protection were hot items at Storage Networking World in Dallas last week. Intel rolled out enterprise solid state flash drives for servers and storage. Developed in collaboration with Micron, Intel released NAND flash drives called the X-25E Extreme Serial Advanced Technology Attachment Solid State Drive. The company's flash drives are priced at $695. The 32GB drive is available now and a 64GB version is expected by Q1 2009.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet gains momentum

10/21/08

The Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) bandwagon gathered steam last week at Storage Networking World as QLogic, NetApp and EMC introduced products that support the new transport protocol.

Backup in a box for SMBs and consumers from Dell, Iomega

10/16/08

Dell and EMC's Iomega last week introduced two different backup appliances for use in small and midsize enterprises and for consumers.

FalconStor, Compellent add support for Microsoft Hyper-V

10/14/08

FalconStor this week became one of the first storage vendors to announce its support of Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization technology. FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) now supports Hyper-V environments and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering. FalconStor NSS allows application-consistent failover across geographically dispersed clusters of both physical and Hyper-V enabled virtual servers.

Unitrends adds Web 2.0 management console to business continuity, disaster recovery software

10/09/08

One of the lesser-known data protection players last week announced a new version of its business continuity and disaster recovery software that lets users simplify the management of data protection environments. Unitrends announced Rapid Recovery 4.0, a software package that sports a new Web 2.0 Rich Internet Application-based management console. The console lets users run either on-demand or scheduled backups for client systems or for vaulting data from Unitrends Data Protection Units (DPU) or Data Protection Vaults.

HP acquires LeftHand Networks to beef up its small, midrange storage offerings

10/07/08

HP acquired one of the last independent iSCSI storage vendors last week in a $360 million all-cash deal. The company snapped up LeftHand Networks to bolster its small and mid-range storage offerings and be able to give its customers a broad storage offering. HP will be able to leverage LeftHand's iSCSI expertise in its up-to-now paltry iSCSI hardware.

Enterprise flash drives on the rise

10/02/08

Enterprise flash drive technology got a boost last week with several announcements. EMC unveiled a package that incorporates EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 storage systems containing EFD with Oracle Database Applications to improve application performance. Meanwhile, the Storage Networking Industry Association took up the EFD cause with the launch of a Solid State Disk Initiative for enterprise and consumer applications.

QLogic, Pillar Data, HP make storage waves at Oracle OpenWorld

09/30/08

Oracle OpenWorld last week was a magnet for storage vendors intent on making their products work better with Oracle's databases and applications.

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Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW.