Posted 03/10/10 at 07:25:24 AM by Paul Lilly

In the highly competitive enterprise storage sector, IBM this week had reason to celebrate, saying it achieved the highest growth among the top three storage vendors.

According to a market share report by IDC, IBM's external disk storage systems revenue grew by 9 percent year-over-year during the fourth quarter of 2009, putting the company's growth rate well ahead of the competition. By contrast, EMC stayed relatively flat with a 0.7 percent decline, while Hewlett Packard's revenue took a backwards slide to the tune of 7.3 percent during the same quarter.

Big Blue also noted gains in the Windows and Linux OS segments in 2009, boasting a 24 percent increase in Linux storage. What makes this particularly noteworthy is that the overall Linux storage market was down 4 percent.

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Posted 03/10/10 at 07:25:21 AM by Paul Lilly

Networking specialist Cisco on Tuesday announced what it claims is a "major advancement in Internet networking" in its CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (CRS).

"With more than 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system, the Cisco CRS-3 is designed to transform the broadband communication and entertainment industry by accelerating the delivery of compelling new experiences for consumers, new revenue opportunities for service providers, and new ways to collaborate in the workplace," Cisco said.

Sound pretty ambitious, and Cisco has the numbers to match. The CRS-3 delivers up to 322Tbps (that's Terabits per second), which Cisco says is enough to enable the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second. It's also more than triple the capacity of the 92Tbps CRS-1, and 12 times the capacity of any other core router in the industry.

"The next generation Internet is upon us and we are confident that the Cisco CRS-3 will play a crucial role as service providers like AT&T deliver an exciting, new array of video, mobile, data center, and cloud services," said Pankaj Patel, senior VP and GM, Service Provider Business, Cisco.

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Posted 03/10/10 at 07:25:19 AM by Paul Lilly

Should your IT department consider switching to Macs? Perhaps, if the only criteria is the cost of management. That's because according to a new survey by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, IT admins feel that Macs have lower management costs than PCs.

The survey pinged 260 IT admins from large organizations with both Macs and PCs, and in some categories -- such as troubleshooting, user training, and help desk calls -- three times as many respondents said that Macs are easier on the wallet to manage.

"Administrators in organizations that have both Mac and PC platforms have the experience to determine whether managing Macs is less expensive," said T. Reid Lewis, CEO of Group Logic, and president of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance. "The members of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance provide products and services that make deployment and management of Macs easier to do."

Perhaps most surprising is that the respondents rated every category in the Macs' favor, including system configuration. You can read the full survey results here (PDF).

Are you buying the survey results? Hit the jump and sound off!

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Posted 03/09/10 at 07:36:09 AM by Paul Lilly

QNAP this week expanded its Business Series Turbo NAS lineup with a pair of new 1u rack-mounted- 4-drive models, the TS-459U-RP and TS-459U-SP.

Both new models offer up to 8TB of storage (using 2TB drives) and have been certified as compatible with VMware's vSphere4 (ESX 4.0) virtualization platform, QNAP said.

"QNAP's commitment to delivering SMB, Corporate, and entry-level Enterprise customers exactly what they need, and nothing they do not shine through with the TS-459U-SP and TS-459U-RP models" said Laurent Cheng, Product Manager of QNAP Systems, Inc. "These new Business Series models provide businesses of all sizes a solid foundation for their network storage needs and a host of business-critical applications."

The RP model includes a redundant power supply, so should one of them fail, the other will keep things running with enough power to juice up the entire system. The SP model includes one power supply, but can be upgraded to the RP configuration.

Both models support RAID 0/1/5/5+ hot spare/6, and JOBD, 256-bit AES volume level encryption, 5 USB ports, 2 eSATA portas, DOM architecture with fail-safe dual OS, scheduled power on/off, Wake on LAN, and other goodies.

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Posted 03/09/10 at 07:36:07 AM by Paul Lilly

Good news for business owners chomping on the bit for Microsoft Office 2010. Come May 12, Microsoft will begin selling the full version of its upcoming productivity suite to businesses, about a month before the general public will be able to get their hands on a copy.

"For businesses, we will launch the 2010 set of products, including Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 worldwide on May 12," Jefon Fark, senior marketing manager for Microsoft Office, wrote in a blog post. "For consumers, Office 2010 will be available online and on retail shelves this June. Until then, you can get the Office 2010 beta."

All of the above mentioned products are on schedule to be RTM (released to manufacturing) in April, eWeek reports. And for those participating in Microsoft's Office 2010 Technology Guarantee, the blog outlines eligibility requirements, which entails purchasing and activating either Office 2007, or a new PC with Office 2007, between March 5 and September 30; either have or create a Windows Live ID; and redeem the actual guarantee right here.

More info here.

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Posted 03/09/10 at 07:36:04 AM by Paul Lilly

Most would probably agree that the patent system in the U.S. is busted and could use an overhaul. What's surprising, however, is that IBM would push for change, yet that's actually what Big Blue is doing.

IBM, which for the 17th consecutive year earned the most U.S. patents of any company with 4,914 and holds more than 30,000 altogether, said it is endorsing the compromise on U.S. patent reform legislation announced by Senate leaders.

"The leadership of Senators Leahy, Sessions and others has forged a compromise bill that works for all members of the intellectual property community and represents real progress on patent reform," said Robert Weber, senior vice president, Legal and Regulatory Affairs and General Counsel, IBM. "Modernizing the patent system, as outlined in this bill, will protect inventors and promote innovation."

According to IBM, the first significant update to the nation's patent laws in more than 50 years would bolster American competitiveness in the global economy and help stimulate innovation. We agree, we just didn't expect to hear it from IBM.

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Posted 03/08/10 at 07:41:09 AM by Paul Lilly

Jobs aren't exactly easy to come by these days, but for those employed as security professionals, 2009 wasn't all that bad, a new survey suggests. According to ISC Squared, 55 percent of U.S. security pros said their salaries went up in 2009.

ISC Squared pinged more than 3,000 global technology security pros, over half of which were from the U.S. Of those, 800 claimed to have hiring authority, with 50 percent saying they expect to hire either full-time help or contractors in 2010.

"The results from our latest Career Impact Survey show that in a very difficult economic environment, organizations are placing an even higher value on the work that information security professionals do," W. Hord Tipton, executive director for ISC Squared, said in a statement. "It's a sign of the private and public sectors' ever-increasing dependence upon the stability and security of the online world, providing a plethora of career opportunities for knowledgeable, qualified, motivated security professionals."

The respondents represented a wide range of industries, including government, IT, professional services, and banking.

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Posted 03/08/10 at 07:41:07 AM by Paul Lilly

If you're interested in picking up Microsoft's Windows Essential Business Server 2008 product, you'll have to do so quick. In a note on its website, Microsoft said it will no longer sell ESB 2008 after June 30, 2010.

"We remain committed to helping midsize customers realize the benefits of IT Solutions from Microsoft, and as such continue to invest aggressively in this space," Microsoft wrote. "As an alternative to the EBS 2008 suite, we encourage you to learn more about individual component software from the suite including Windows Server 2008 R2, System Center Essentials, Microsoft Forefront, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010."

The reason, says Microsoft, is an attempt to streamline the company's portfolio. However, the Redmond software giant did note that it will continue to support the product through the normal lifecycle.

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