Chris Preimesberger

NetApp founder and Executive Vice-President Dave Hitz and his company are thinking differently about data and how it is managed, because virtualization has completely changed its nature. That brain work has resulted in what Hitz calls Agile Data Infrastructure, which came out June 20 and serves as the new descriptor for the latest version of […]

IBM is busy these days taking its celebrated Watson knowledge base and user application to the markets. The first three verticals it has targeted are ones that are often groundbreakers when it comes to new IT: financial services, health care and government. The company isn’t at liberty just yet to talk about how Watson may […]

New-generation approaches to solid-state storage systems, based on firsthand experience with both the successes and failures of past development initiatives, continue to come to the fore. Startup Skyera Inc., founded by the man and his team that started up SandForce and then sold it to LSI for $370 million in October 2011, said June 19 […]

Enterprise social networking platforms, sadly, haven€™t shown a lot of creativity when it comes to their interfaces. Frankly, most of them simply copy Facebook. Familiarity with the look and feel of an app is a good thing, because people are more apt to use it. But a Facebook-style UI might not be the most functional […]

Fast-growing object storage software maker Caringo added three new cloud system-related products to its catalog June 19. The Austin, Texas-based company, whose market sweet spots are midrange and larger enterprises, debuted its new Elastic Content Protection, CloudScaler and Indexer products, which run on its front-line Object Storage Platform powered by CAStor. As an alternative from […]

Invest in Training Too often, cloud transformations are executed without the authority and expertise that yields early wins and creates the organizational support necessary to sustain conviction in your project over time. Successful cloud builders invest in training early and often. Develop a Tradesman Culture While you may count on vendors and other third parties […]

Microsoft clearly copied its secrecy-in-product-launch approach from Apple, but the new Windows tablet PC it launched June 18 to compete with the iPad appears to be quite an original piece of work. At an invitation-only media event held at the obscure Milk Studios on Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood, Microsoft unveiled the Surface, a long-awaited competitor […]

In a rare jump-the-gun earnings announcement, Oracle on June 18 took its good news to Wall Street and its investors three days earlier than scheduled, reporting that its fiscal Q4 2012 net income increased 8 percent to $3.5 billion, or 69 cents a share. Thanks to the better-than-expected results, Oracle’s shares moved higher in online […]

Consumer and small-business storage device maker Promise Technology on June 18 introduced the Pegasus J2, a Thunderbolt interface storage device, which the company claims can move data at speeds up to 750MB per second in a device the size of a smartphone. Pegasus J2 (pictured next to an Apple mouse), designed as a storage complement […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions of people around the world have been tuning in for the past week and today, June 17, via various modes of broadcast to the 112th U.S. Open golf championship for a lot of reasons. Among the usual ones are: a) witnessing the best golfers in the world competing on one of […]

Partners Found Software Development Laboratories Software Development Laboratories, the precursor to Oracle, is founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison (right), Bob Miner (left) and Ed Oates. A more generic name for an IT company would have been hard to find. First Client: The CIA The company signed its first client, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. […]

Excessive Internal Data Access Privileges System administrators with complete access to servers and data pose a tremendous internal threat if they turn against the company. So does anyone (including executives) who maintains inappropriate access rights to information after changing positions within a company. Third-Party Access Employees of third parties may have access to any unencrypted […]