Storage Web Digest: Kick-Start for New Fibre Channel SANs

Heres a variety of storage news stories from around the world:

Enterprise Storage

Kick-Start for New Fibre Channel SANs

A group of leading storage equipment and software producers will develop 10Gbps and 4Gbps storage area network products, following endorsement from the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA). Agilent Technologies, FalconStor Software, Fujitsu, JNI, Seagate and QLogic will initially double throughput from the current 2Gbps maximum, maintaining backwards compatibility. The 10Gbps technology will not be backwards compatible, but Robin Purohit, vice president of product management at storage software vendor Veritas, said the huge performance leap would make the 10Gbps market much larger. Still he added: "I think 4Gbps will be short-lived because it wont give companies the economies of scale they need."

Read the full story on: Vnunet.com

EzCOPY Stand-Alone Hard Drive Copier

Arco Data Protection Systems recently released EzCOPY, a stand-alone unit that makes an exact mirror image of hard drives. The company said the "source" and "target" drives can be from different manufacturers and different capacities, and the device can copy one gigabyte of data in less than one minute.

Read the full press release on:Silicon Valley Biz Ink

Personal Storage

MS High-Definition DVD Hits Shelves

Artisan Entertainment this week released the first high-definition DVD for the home video market. The new DVD, T2: Extreme DVD, is a digitally remastered version of the standard DVD and a second disc with a high-definition DVD-ROM. The latter, which can be played only on computers running Microsofts XP operating system, provides more picture detail than many HDTV broadcasts, Microsoft officials said. Erin Cullen, a product manager in Microsofts Windows digital media division, said the company is not working on any other high-definition DVDs for feature films. However, to push its proprietary format beyond the computer and into the living room, Microsoft submitted its Windows Media technology to the industrywide DVD Forum as a possible standard for high-definition video, she said.

Read the full story on:Sunspot.net

Storage Business

Seagate: Driving in the Right Direction

When Seagate Technology transformed into a privately-held company in November 2000, its corporate makeover focused heavily toward research and development. But several issues worked their way onto its priority list, including inventory and logistics management, e-business connectivity and a means to improve supplier and customer relationships. That focus is paying dividends. Seagate said it has saved millions in supply chain costs over the past several years, in part by realizing a two-week reduction in replenishment cycle times and a doubling of inventory turns. And its not over yet. The storage equipment maker discovered that such productivity gains are part of a permanent pursuit.

Read the full story on:EBN