Chris Preimesberger

SanDisk, Seagate Technology, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba and Fujitsu have been making most of the solid-state disk headlines lately. They now have some competition from an old, familiar face.Texas Memory Systems, 30 years old this year, introduced a new SSD July 22 with what it claims is record performance and record capacity for a RAM-based […]

Brocade Communications’ $3 billion acquisition of neighboring Foundry Networks, announced July 21, is all about connectivity, and it is causing plenty of talk in the storage and networking analyst communities. After all, if this deal closes as expected this fall, Brocade will have pulled off one of the largest networking sector acquisitions in IT history.The […]

Brocade Communications Systems took a major step toward leveling the networking playing field against market superpower Cisco Systems July 21 by acquiring Internet router and switch maker Foundry Networks for about $3 billion in cash. Many enterprises need to bolster their infrastructures to support the growing prevalence of Web-based and mobile applications, and this merger […]

People are talking about the Amazon S3 fiasco of the evening of July 20 and what the long- and short-term implications of this breakdown might be for this popular storage service. Amazon.com’s Amazon Simple Storage Service was beset by unexplained outages for anywhere from 2 to 6 hours Sunday night.Users of Amazon S3 and Amazon […]

Data storage planning for a disaster of any sort used to be a relatively simple process: The IT staff would back up all important current business data onto extra disk drive servers every night or weekend; transfer older information onto archive tape once a week or month; then watch Iron Mountain or a similar service […]

An IT employee who is charged with gumming up the works at the City and County of San Francisco’s main data center by changing access passwords for administrators could have been stopped short of crippling access to the system if IT management had had the right security software in place.Terry Childs, 43, of Pittsburg, Calif., […]

Here is yet another proof point in the inevitability of on-demand computing. The venerable and almost hidebound EMC is making it easier for customers to combine on-premises and on-demand storage as they see fit. EMC, which hasn’t acquired a new company for a couple of months now after scooping up 38 companies since 2001, has […]

Sun Microsystems on July 14 launched the world’s first enterprise tape drive capable of carrying 1 terabyte worth of data. A day later, rival IBM July 15 followed suit with its own 1TB drive that it claims is the fastest on the market.These aren’t storage drives for the faint of wallet. Sun’s costs about $37,000 […]

Applications for the iPhone 3G are popping up all over the map as software developers rush to support the new Apple wireless phone that is expected win more converts among business users.One of the latest entrants is Mailtrust, a business e-mail storage specialist and a division of Rackspace Hosting. Mailtrust announced on July 15 that […]

NBC is busy putting the finishing touches on its near-round-the-clock coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games that debut Aug. 8, and IT storage will play a significant role in the success or failure of the effort. Since the international event was first televised live by ABC in 1960 from Rome, no network has ever […]

Who the heck is running Microsoft’s M&A team? From The Station’s vantage point, it sure looks like billionaire corporate pirate Carl Icahn, who doesn’t even work for Microsoft. Yahoo’s board of directors, forced by lawyers to meet on a day off (Saturday) and make a decision on Microsoft’s (read that Icahn’s) latest offer to dismantle […]

Wow, sudden and sad news, this. A powerful, respected voice in IT trade journalism has been stilled. Joe Barr, a colleague of The Station at NewsForge — now Linux.com— several years ago, died in his sleep July 10 in his home near Austin, Texas. He was 61. Warthawg, which was his email handle, wrote fiery, […]