Symantec profit, EMC stocks down
Symantec reported that revenue for its final fiscal quarter of 2007
was up 10% over a year ago to $1.4 billion, beating Wall Street
estimates. The company's profit, however, dropped to $95.2 million,
compared to $100.5 million a year earlier. Symantec officials
attributed this to a $19 million restructuring charge related to
job cuts earlier in the year.
During the company's earnings call, officials said that
NetBackup and Storage Foundation were the products that
performed best in the datacentre group. However, chairman and CEO
John Thompson also said that large deals with high-end enterprises
also declined. "This decline is primarily attributable to weaker
than expected business in the Americas. We believe this was a
Symantec specific issue and as such, took action to address the
issues earlier this month," he said.
Meanwhile,
EMC reported strong revenue growth , but its outlook for the
rest of the year remained unchanged, disappointing Wall Street
analysts who had expected a revision to the forecast after the
strong second quarter. The stock price fell from $19.28 at the time
of the earnings report to as low as $17.99 on Thursday. Shares were
also pushed down by an overall
decline in the stock market.
Data Domain spruces up performance
Data Domain announced it has upgraded processors in its entry and
midrange data deduplication boxes to go along with the
new high-end DD580 model announced in May.
The new processors have been added to the DD510, DD530 and DD565
appliances. Data Domain is claiming up to 290 GB per hour
performance on the DD510, 360 GB per hour for the DD530 and 630
GB per hour for the DD565.
Isilon adds thin provisioning, new storage node
Isilon Systems announced a new software feature for its clustered
network attached storage (NAS) systems called SmartQuotas, which
does quota management and thin provisioning. Previously, the Isilon
cluster created a single volume. With the SmartQuotas feature, the
administrator can mask the amount of capacity in the cluster volume
to end users and can also use this masking capability to over
allocate, or thin provision, the storage capacity in the cluster.
Isilon also announced the IQ9000 and EX9000 extension nodes, each
of which contain 12 Seagate 750 GB SATA-II disk drives for 9
terabytes (TB) capacity. The IQ 9000, provides linear scaling of
both capacity and performance. The EX 9000 provides scaling of
capacity independent of performance.
Cisco kicks off conference with new products
To kick off its annual Cisco Live conference this week, Cisco
released a bevy of announcements across its product lines,
including a new application called VFrame Data Center (VFrame DC),
a data center virtualisation application that "orchestrates" server
and storage network connections. Cisco claims the application will
link compute, networking and storage resources together as
virtualised services. The company also announced encryption for its
Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) WAN optimisation product; the
MDS 18/4 Multiservice Module, with 18 4 Gbps Fibre Channel ports
and four IP storage ports; the MDS 9222i Multiservice Modular
Switch aimed at departmental and remote branch office SANs, the MDS
9134 Multilayer Fabric Switch, which includes 4 Gbps and 10 Gbps
ports and a Quick Configuration Wizard; and an N-Port virtualizer
for large SAN-attached blade server deployments.
NASA announced as 100th customer for Exanet
Exanet announced that NASA is expanding its storage with the
company's ExaStore ICM clustered NAS product. Exanet will be
installed at the Dryden Flight Research Center, where it will
process data produced by in-flight tests.
IDC says personal storage market to double by 2011
Get ready for the digital home and a "large number of vendors …
attempting to capitalise" on it, according to analyst firm IDC.
Following two years of growth, around 70% in 2006 and over 30% in
2007, the market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of more than 20% from 2006 to 2011, according to a new
report from IDC.
Seagate puts disaster recovery team on standby Seagate
Recovery Services announced it has its Rapid Response Data Recovery
Teams on 24/7 standby for immediate deployment anywhere in the U.S.
during this hurricane season. The service unit recovers
inaccessible or corrupted data from damaged digital media.
SteelEye adds CDP for Windows
SteelEye Technology announced version 6 of its Windows replication
software, which adds continuous data protection (CDP) capabilities
to the offsite replication product. The new version will also
support multiple replication targets and includes a new recovery
wizard. The company is also claiming performance boosts with this
release.
Fujitsu pushes SATA vibration compensation
Fujitsu announced a new series of mobile hard disk drives, which
include capacities up to 200 GB, 5400 rpm spindle speed and
features to address the adverse effects of rotational vibration.
Fujitsu said the drive will anticipates vibration disturbances and
counteract them to maximise performance.
Barracuda launches email archiver
Network security vendor Barracuda Networks announced the Barracuda
Message Archiver email archiving appliance. The product captures
emails using either journaling or SMTP and can import old messages
from existing email archives, indexes and searches messages,
single-instances messages, and provides role-based access control.
It's available in three models, the Barracuda Message Archiver 350,
450 and 650. Pricing starts at $4,999.
Zmanda ships MySQL backup reporter
Zmanda announced that its open source Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM)
for MySQL is now available with the Zmanda Management Console. New
features include a new graphical interface, role-based security for
databases and plug-in kits for snapshot backups.
Tandberg announces LTO-4 autoloader
Tandberg Data announced the availability of its Magnum 1x7
Autoloader with LTO-4. The autoloader includes one LTO-4 tape drive
and seven cartridge slots, and the company claims transfer speeds
of up to 864 GB per hour compressed and capacity of up to 11.2 TB
in a 2U form factor. The product is available now at an estimated
street price of $6,399, including one year of onsite service and a
one-year warranty.