Enterprise Storage
Veritas Looks Beyond the Storage Horizon
Storage management software vendor Veritas Software said it plans to expand into other IT management technologies, to better compete against more diversified rivals such as EMC, Computer Associates International and IBM. Veritas announced three acquisitions since November, adding products in areas such as server provisioning and application performance management. The deals put the company into markets beyond storage management and server clustering for the first time. Veritas big task this year is to “consolidate and integrate the companies we acquired,” said Jeremy Burton, the companys chief marketing officer. “But I dont think it will be technology that hinders us. It will be execution [issues] if we cant do it.” According to Anders Lofgren, an analyst at Giga Information Group, Veritas expansion plan is a natural evolution, and he predicted that other storage software vendors will follow suit.
Read the full story on:Computerworld
Personal Storage
Western Digital Announces SATA Drive With SCSI Specs
Western Digital last week introduced the WD Raptor, a Serial ATA drive with enterprise-class specifications, including a 10,000-rpm spindle speed, 1.2 million-hours MTBF (mean time between failure) rate and a 5.2-millisecond average seek time. The new 36GB drive will retail for $160, which compares favorably with SCSI drives of the same capacity, which average about $200.
Read the full story on:Computerworld
Prices for DVD-R and DVD+R Discs To Remain Stable in First Half of Year
Prices for DVD-R and DVD+R discs are expected to remain stable in the first half of the year, as the yield rate from second-tier makers remain low, according a DigiTimes report. Although manufacturers are expanding production capacity for the discs, only first-tier manufacturers can reach yields of 80-90 percent, while most second-tier makers are seeing yields as low as 20-30 percent.
Some companies pointed out that it will take about one to two quarters for second-tier disc makers to pick up their yield rates. Production of DVD-R and DVD+R discs has a higher entry barrier than that of CD-R discs.
Read the full story on:DigiTimes
Fujitsu Releases 2.3GB Magneto-Optical Storage Drive With USB 2.0 Interface
At last weeks Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, Calif., Fujitsu Computer Products of America announced volume availability of its 2.3GB removable storage product, the DynaMO 2300U2. The drive comes with a USB 2.0 interface and uses Fujitsu Magneto-Optical (MO) disk technology. The 2300U2 is priced at $349 and Fujitsu 2.3GB media are priced at $20 per disk, available in 5-packs.
Read the full press release on:DataStoreX
Storage Business
Matsushita To Expand Philippine DVD Disk Drive Production
Matsushita Electric Industrial said it will spend $32 million to expand DVD disk drive production in the Philippines. The investments will be spread over five years, Hiroshi Nishimura, president of Kyushu Matsushita Electric said in a statement. Matsushitas Philippine factory, which started CD and DVD disk drive production in October 2000, will make an average of 1.38 million DVD drives over the next five years. Matsushita Electric is the parent company of Panasonic.
Read the full story on:Bloomberg.com