Weekly compilation of storage news:Sun storage revenues sink
Sun Microsystems has reported that its overall revenues were up
last quarter, marking a turnaround for many of its business units
after a tumultuous year for the company in 2006. In contrast to a
net loss of $301 million in the previous year, last quarter showed
a net income of $329 million.
However, the data center business unit, which includes servers
and storage, reported $639 million revenues in the quarter, a
decline of 10% from the same quarter last year. CEO Jonathan
Schwartz acknowledged, on the company's earnings call, that
"overall, the top line [numbers are] not what we would like [them]
to be." He attributed the decline to weakness in storage spending
in the U.S., which has also been given as a reason for falling
revenues by Network Appliance (NetApp) this year.
However, Schwartz reported that the company had shipped 20
petabytes (PB) of the SunFire X4500 server, aka Thumper, in the
quarter, and that the product has shown an annual billing run rate
of $100 million. Schwartz said the company is currently going
through "a difficult transition as we move to Solaris-based
systems." He added that more server/storage hybrid products, like
Thumper, would be coming from Sun over the next year.
Bocada adds plug-in for NetBackup PureDisk
Data protection management (DPM) software vendor Bocada announced
new support for Symantec's Veritas NetBackup PureDisk data
deduplication software with its Bocada Enterprise 5 NetBackup
PureDisk plug-in, which will allow reporting and troubleshooting
for the Symantec product. The plug-in, according to a press
release, "will be generally available this summer."
ONStor lands $27M, announces customer
ONStor announced it has closed a $27 million mezzanine round of
funding. New investor Sand Hill Capital joins existing investors
Foundation Capital, Mayfield Fund, ComVentures and Worldview
Technology Partners. Officials have since said publicly that they
are planning to pursue an initial public offering (IPO) sometime
next year.
In a separate release, ONStor announced that backup service
provider CoreVault, a privately held division of DWL Holding Co.,
an affiliated company of Dobson Telephone, has chosen its Bobcat
Series network attached storage (NAS) gateway and mirroring
software for disaster recovery. CoreVault purchased one high
availability cluster of ONStor Bobcats for its primary production
site and one single node for its secondary site about 150 miles
away.
RTC stores Exchange and file services data on
NetApp
NetApp announced that a Swiss provider of outsourced banking
services, RTC, will use NetApp storage for its Microsoft Exchange
and midrange file services offerings. RTC processes the data of
over four million Swiss bank customers and Switzerland's 56
regional banks outsource their IT to a regional banking service
provider, which in turn uses RTC's IT services. The company bought
a bundle of primary storage, disaster recovery and disk-to-disk
backup products.
Asigra updates virtual server backup
Asigra announced version 7.0 of its Televaulting software, which
will move it completely from a 32-bit to a 64-bit operating system,
running on 64-bit hardware and supporting 64-bit applications,
including virtual servers. Version 7.0 also has a new feature that
will allow restore from one virtual server type to another, as well
as restores from physical to virtual servers and vice versa.
Unitrends embeds encryption for SMBs
Unitrends announced its InCrypt encryption product, a data backup
and encryption appliance for small and mid-sized businesses (SMB).
InCrypt encrypts at-rest and in-flight data with a module that can
be added to Unitrends other products to make one appliance,
including data encryption, offsite electronic vaulting and
bare-metal restore for operating systems, applications and data.
The module is available now and priced at $3,995 for a 2U appliance
and $5,995 for 3U and 5U appliances.
Iomega announces new network hard drives
Iomega announced a new lineup of StorCenter network hard drive
products aimed at small office/home office (SOHO) customers. Three
new StorCenter models, ranging in storage capacity from 500GB to 1
terabyte (TB), also incorporate media-serving and print server
capability. They also include Active Directory support, journaling
file system and EMC Retrospect Express backup software. The 1 TB
version is available for $389; 750 GB for $359 and 500 GB for
$269.
Vembu targets service providers with data backup
software
Vembu Technologies, which makes data backup software marketed to
remote office/branch office (ROBO) environments, unveiled a new
version of its StoreGrid backup software. StoreGrid's Service
Provider Edition, targeted at companies offering online backup
services to SMBs, supports disk-to-disk (D2D) backup and allows
service providers to back up their customers' workstations and
servers to a remote backup server.
EMC and IBM extend mainframe interoperability
EMC announced the extension of a licensing agreement with IBM that
will allow customers to continue using EMC and IBM products in IBM
System z mainframe environments. As part of the multiyear
agreement, IBM will provide EMC with updated specifications for
continued compatibility between EMC's Symmetrix arrays and IBM
mainframes. Financial terms are not being disclosed.
ExaGrid reports sales growth
ExaGrid announced that sales of its disk-based backup products for
the quarter ending June 30, 2007, were up 115% compared to the
second quarter of 2006. The company also launched sales and
marketing efforts in Asia-Pacific, opened new offices and signed
six new resellers.
LSI samples new batch of disk drives
LSI announced that it has begun shipping sample quantities of its
65-nanometer multi-interface Physical Layer (PHY) for hard disk
drives (HDD) in notebook and desktop personal computers as well as
enterprise storage systems. The company claims increased
performance and lower overall system power with the new version of
the PHY, a component of an integrated circuit that serves as the
electrical interface which performs the data transmission between
the HDD and the host.
HP partners with Asempra
Asempra Technologies, which targets the midmarket with its backup
and continuous data protection (CDP) products, announced it is has
been named a gold level developer in Hewlett-Packard's (HP)
Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) Partner program. Asempra, in
business since last September and with a total of less than 50
end-user customers, also recently announced a partnership with
IBM.