Chris Preimesberger

VMware is taking a detour from its standard virtualization and mobile network discussions lately and adding a buzz term that Cisco Systems has been using for years: software-defined networking. To that end, VMware said July 23 that it is paying $1.05 billion in cash plus $210 million of unvested equity for SDN software maker Nicira, […]

Dell’s key market target is the midrange company that ostensibly doesn’t have to process huge data workloads on a regular basis. Nonetheless, the company is moving deeper into the storage and handling of big data workloads. Dell on July 23 launched what it calls a Big Data Retention object and structured-data storage package that can, […]

Exactly how demanding is your IT position, in the opinion of your peers? Certainly a statement like that one is hard to qualify at best, but wouldn’t you be a smidgen curious to know where you rank on the IT job difficulty scale? Well, Emerson Network Power, which makes physical and software infrastructure for data […]

MSDN blogger Brad Calder of the Azure team posted an update July 18 noting that Microsoft’s Windows Azure Storage cloud has passed the 4 trillion mark in objects stored. Four thousand billions. That’s qualifies as more than a few digital objects. “Windows Azure Storage has had an amazing year of growth,” Calder wrote. “We have […]

Is phase-change memory, acronymed PCM and discussed for the last six years as a potential replacement for NAND flash, finally ready for prime time? Solid-state semiconductor maker Micron Technology July 17 claimed to be the first in the industry to make available high volumes of its 45-nanometer phase-change memory chip for mobile devices. The Boise, […]

There might be some consternation at the SanDisk headquarters and among shareholders as the result of solid-state drive (SSD) price wars that are currently in full swing. The solid-state storage media maker, best known for making those little blue Secure Digital, or SD, cards for cameras and smartphones, reported July 19 a second-quarter profit of […]

Oracle, which has been on an acquisition tear lately, said July 19 that it has bought most of the assets of business software developer Skire, which makes a suite of capital program management and facilities management applications. Skire’s applications, which Oracle will add to its growing collection of choices to be made available through its […]

Apache Hadoop is all the rage in enterprises that are installing new big data workload analytics deployments, and it is proving to be a huge asset for many IT and line-of-business decision makers. But the popular batch-processing engine does have its weaknesses. One of them is that it isn’t particularly fast to start up, because […]

Cloud storage provider Dropbox believes its service suffered a security breach after some users discovered July 17 that they had been targets of spam emails sent to accounts used solely for the cloud file storage service. Spam isn’t supposed to get into private storage services; ostensibly, only subscribed users have access to their accounts. As […]

VCE, a 3-year-old startup that is producing new-generation converged cloud infrastructure systems, on July 19 announced that it has hired former Cisco Systems executive Praveen Akkiraju as its new CEO. Akkiraju (pictured) joins President Frank Hauck, appointed in 2011, as the newest members of VCE’s management team. Akkiraju and Hauck also will join the company’s […]

Some skeptics would call Oracle’s new low-end tape storage system a “dumbing down” of a more sophisticated, large-enterprise deployment. Others might describe it simply as the result of the “trickle-down effect” from large enterprise equipment down to small and midsized businesses. Oracle itself simply explains the StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library it launched July 18 […]

Good chief executive officers don’t simply apply online, attend a couple of interviews and start work on Monday. Companies spend an inordinate amount of money, energy and consultant time trying to find just the right field general to lead their troops into the market wars. CEOs must have a combination of hard-to-find traits: They have […]