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Note: For Storage news after 10/01/06, please go to Optical Networking

Storage News (Before 10/01/06)

QLogic receives distribution industry's Rising Star Award
QLogic Corp., the leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), stackable switches and blade server switches, today announced that it is a recipient of the Global Technology Distribution Council’s inaugural Rising Star Award for outstanding sales growth through IT distributors. The GTDC presented the award to David Zimmer, senior director Worldwide Channels, at its annual Summit event, held this year at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, Sept. 19-20, and attended by the world’s leading IT vendors and distributors.
The GTDC, whose member distributors represent more than $80 billion in annual sales, created the Rising Star Awards because of the impressive success companies like QLogic are having in partnership with IT distributors. Reflected in the theme of this year’s conference, GTDC Summit 2006: The New Wave of Growth in Distribution, the value proposition of IT distributors has never been more pronounced, especially considering the renewed industry emphasis on reseller channel services, supply chain efficiency and cost management. QLogic's performance attests to the excellent demand for its products as well as the pivotal role of distributors in reaching and supporting diverse end-user markets.
“QLogic is honored to accept this award in recognition of our strong and growing channels business, developed in concert with our distribution partners worldwide,” said David Zimmer, senior director Worldwide Channels at QLogic. “Strong distribution partnerships are a key element of our global channel strategy and offer our solution providers access to our expanding portfolio of storage area network products, services and solutions. We look forward to forging even stronger bonds with our distributors and are delighted that the GTDC has marked our commitment with this award.”
Related Channels: Storage

QLogic SANbox Fibre Channel switches qualified by Cisco and EMC
QLogic Corp., the leader in blade server switches, announced that Cisco Systems and EMC have qualified QLogic SANbox® Fibre Channel switch modules for IBM BladeCenter® with MDS 9000 Series Multilayer Directors and Fabric Switches from Cisco. EMC has qualified the combination of the QLogic switches and the Cisco MDS 9000 Series for use with EMC® Symmetrix® DMX series and EMC CLARiiON® CX series networked storage systems.
"Through the EMC E-Lab Tested™ program, we work with QLogic, Cisco and others to build and rigorously test real-world configurations for interoperability with our industry leading networked storage systems," said Marty Lans, EMC Senior Director of Storage Networking. "With the highly rigorous testing provided by the EMC E-Lab process, our customers can confidently deploy highly reliable, high performing network- based solutions."
Related Channels: Storage

Huawei optical network products get certification from IBM
After obtaining the certification of Sun and McDATA for interoperability, the optical network solutions of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei") passed the strict interoperability test of IBM in late May, 2006 and were added into the Interoperability Matrix of the IBM ESS, the DS 8000 and the DS 6000 series in August, 2006. The IBM ESS series are IBM's most widely deployed storage products, while the DS 8000 and the DS 6000 are the latest prevailing storage series launched by IBM.
As a leading supplier of network storage products and solutions, IBM is mainly engaged in providing storage solutions for high-end customers, like multinational financial firms, telecommunication operators, governments, and electric power plants. After being proved interoperable with the IBM ESS series, DS 8000 and DS 6000, Huawei's OptiX Metro 6100, 6040 & OptiX OSN 7500, 3500, 2500, 1500 were officially listed into IBM DS 8000 and DS 6000 Interoperability Matrix in August, 2006.
In recent years, Huawei's optical network solutions had been included into the operability matrix of most of the global leading providers of network storage products and solutions, such as Brocade, EMC, HP, IBM, McDATA and SUN... It shows that Huawei's optical network solutions can satisfy the most critical requirements of global leading network storage solutions for long distance data replication, helping Huawei's partners to bring more competitive solutions to enterprises of all sizes.
China's Huawei is a global leading vendor of optical network products and solutions. Its OptiX Metro 6100/6040 is mainly used in transmitting big granule service (e.g. STM-16/64, GE, 10GE etc.) and special services (e.g. ESCON, FICON, Fiber Channel, etc.). It is widely used in metropolitan backbone networks, local area networks, wideband data networks and
storage area networks, and the GE-based access layer. The Huawei OptiX OSN7500/3500/2500/1500 are new generation equipments sharing the same platform with MAN. Integrating the technologies of SDH, WDM, Ethernet, ATM, PDH, ESCON, FC/FICON, DVB-ASI, it can transmit voice, data, SAN, and video services efficiently on the same platform.
The node distance of the Metro & OSN series products can cover several thousand kilometers for SAN service, and all these products have been successfully deployed as data and SAN transport platform for finance and telecommunication enterprises worldwide.
Related Channels: China, Storage, Ethernet, WDM, SDH/SONET

CommVault IPO pricing at $14.50 per share
Oceanport, N.J.-based CommVault Systems, Inc., a leading provider of data management software applications and related services, announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 11,111,111 shares of its common stock at $14.50 per share (before underwriting discounts and commissions). Of those shares, CommVault is selling 6,148,148 shares and selling shareholders are selling 4,962,963 shares.
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and Goldman, Sachs & Co. are serving as the joint bookrunners of this offering, with Merrill Lynch & Co. as the Lead Manager, and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC, RBC Capital Markets and C.E. Unterberg, Towbin LLC serving as co-managers.
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage

Riverbed announces IPO
Riverbed Technology, Inc. announced an initial public offering of 8.7 million shares of its common stock at a price of $9.75 per share. Riverbed has also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to approximately 1.3 million additional shares. Riverbed's common stock will be listed on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol "RVBD" and will begin trading Thursday, September 21, 2006.
Goldman, Sachs & Co. acted as sole book-running manager, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank Securities acted as joint lead managers, and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC acted as co-manager for the offering. When available, a copy of the final prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained by contacting Goldman, Sachs & Co., Attn: Prospectus Department, 85 Broad Street, New York, New York 10004, via fax at 212-902-9316 or via e-mail at prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com.
A registration statement relating to the offering was filed with and declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The offering is being made solely by means of a prospectus. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage

McDATA launches unified platform for Heterogeneous SAN management
McDATA Corporation, a leading provider of data access solutions, announced the release of Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM) 9.0. This new software release marks a giant step forward, bundling and building upon three previously separate McDATA management applications to create one powerful, yet easy to use, storage network management platform. EFCM 9.0 provides advanced multi-vendor fabric management, performance monitoring, and security features to optimize and protect resources, while reducing administration time and costs.
EFCM 9.0 offers sophisticated management capabilities and unmatched scalability for today's heterogeneous, fast growing, multi-site SANs with end-to-end topology visualization from HBA to the storage array, including switches, routers and extension devices. Its support for a tiered 'manager of managers' deployment model allows centralized management of multiple remote networks through a single pane of glass, driving efficiencies and reducing costs. With integrated support for management of routed, extended and iSCSI networks, EFCM 9.0 simplifies and automates configuration and zoning of multi-protocol, multi-site fabrics. And its modularity and scalability allow businesses to add scale and advanced functionality as their SAN grows and evolves, requiring fewer licenses and lower costs.
"As networks get larger and more complex, management of those networks becomes more difficult and time consuming," said Raj Das, vice president of product marketing, McDATA. "EFCM 9.0 simplifies the task by offering centralized management, multi-vendor support and better scalability which will consolidate infrastructure management."
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage

IBM intros encryption technology to ensure customer data privacy
IBM announced the introduction of first-of-its-kind encryption technology and services that deliver the world's first enterprise-class solutions for securing consumer and corporate data privacy.
Today's announcement will help businesses address virtually every element of the data security chain and is highlighted by the introduction of the industry's first fully encrypting data drive, bringing unsurpassed levels of security to small, medium and large businesses alike. This history-making, open-standards-based drive is designed to protect the data in the event that it is lost or stolen, rendering it unreadable to anyone who finds it. With this option, customers can encrypt the large files intended for remote recovery sites, or for data archiving, at tape hardware speeds. It will also provide customers with the ability to share encrypted tapes with their business partners.
IBM's Security and Privacy Services practice within IBM Global Technology Services will provide the necessary framework, architecture and support to execute a comprehensive enterprise security program and leverage IBM's encryption solution to resolve data security issues.
"Demand for the new data encryption drive has been off the charts, with IBM already exceeding its internal goals," said Andy Monshaw, general manager, IBM System Storage. "The reason for the demand is simple -- data loss and identity theft continue to plague corporations and consumers alike. Today, a new level of security is available to corporations that want to ensure their data will never be accessed if it is ever found in the wrong hands. In the case of stolen or lost records saved to tape or disk, encrypting data renders the records totally unreadable."
Encryption comes standard on all newly ordered TS1120 tape drives and clients with installed TS1120 drives can upgrade to include this feature for a fee. The IBM Encryption Key Manager for the Java platform -- free as part of IBM's Java software development kit -- can help generate and communicate encryption keys for tape drives across the enterprise. Finally, key management software supports the encryption tape drive on a wide variety of configurations, such as z/OS, i5/OS, AIX, HP, Sun, Linux and Windows.
The TS1120 drives support three different encryption management methods: Application, System, or Library Managed. For System or Library managed encryption, the IBM Encryption Key Manager for the Java platform -- included, at no additional charge, as part of IBM's Java Virtual Machine -- will generate and communicate encryption keys for tape drives across the enterprise. This encryption capability is supported when the TS1120 Tape Drive is integrated or attaches in the IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library, IBM System Storage TS1120 Tape Controller Model C06, IBM TotalStorage® 3592 Tape Controller Model J70, IBM TotalStorage 3494 Tape Libraries, IBM TotalStorage C20 Silo Attach frame, and stand-alone environments.
Related Channels: Security, Storage

Seagate COO Dave Wickersham adds President hat
Seagate Technology announced that its Chief Operating Officer, Dave Wickersham, has assumed the additional role of company President.
Wickersham, who oversees Seagate's global product research, design and manufacturing operations, will continue to report directly to Chief Executive Officer, Bill Watkins. Previously, the position of president was held by Watkins who is also a Director on the company's board.
"Dave is an extremely talented executive who has played a critical leadership role in Seagate's strong performance," Watkins said. "Under Dave's leadership, our global operations have functioned at the highest levels this industry has ever seen and have helped establish Seagate as an elite technology company at the heart of the on-demand world. Dave has helped define and execute on a strategy that has resulted in Seagate's technological leadership, world-class operational excellence and record performance. Dave understands that continuous innovation is the hallmark of our success, and he will continue to play a central role in keeping innovation at the forefront of all aspects of our business."
Related Channels: Storage, Appointments

Brocade intros 20+ new SAN and FAN products
Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. demonstrated its ongoing commitment to help enterprises meet their growing data management challenges by introducing more than 20 new and enhanced products and services that allow customers to more efficiently access corporate information, consolidate resources, and manage their data center infrastructure. The new offerings will be highlighted and showcased at the upcoming Brocade Analyst Day on September 12 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York City.
The announcements include eight new and enhanced products that extend Brocade's position in the Storage Area Network (SAN) market, new enhancements to three products in the company's Tapestry(TM) family of data management software solutions that address the emerging File Area Network (FAN) market, and ten new Professional Services offerings to streamline the implementation of both SAN and FAN solutions.
Related Channels: Storage, OSS/BSS

QLogic SANbox Fibre Channel switches win award
California-based QLogic Corp., the leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), stackable switches and blade server switches, announced that its SANbox® Series Fibre Channel switches were named the winner in the Switch category of the 2006 Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice Awards.
"The 2006 Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice Awards continue our tradition of honoring products that our readers tell us are most worthy of recognition," said Kim Paulsen, group publisher of Penton Media's Windows IT Pro. "These are the hardware, software, and services that measure up where it counts most--in the businesses, agencies, and institutions that rely on them to deliver what they promise."
Readers were asked to vote on their product preferences in 12 broad technology categories. More than 5,200 readers chose the best among more than 750 products and services.
"This award means a great deal to us because our SANbox products were selected directly by Windows IT Pro readers, who use a wide variety of Windows solutions every day," said Jesse Parker, vice president of product marketing, QLogic Switch Products Group. "It's gratifying to be recognized by end-user customers for our efforts to design high performance, scalable switch solutions that can be installed in minutes and easily managed on the Windows platform."
With the SANbox family of multi-protocol, multi-layer switches, SAN administrators can deploy a common fabric infrastructure that extends from datacenter to branch office. With installation wizards and powerful management software included, SANbox products can be easily set up by technical generalists within minutes and tuned for maximum performance by SAN experts.
Related Channels: Storage

Cavium intros Nitrox PX Security Processor family for IPsec, SSL, and Wireless security applications
California-based Cavium Networks, a world leader in security, network services and embedded processor solutions, announced the NITROX PX Security Processor family with 8 new products targeted at next-generation IP Security (IPsec), Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Wireless security applications. The NITROX PX Family addresses requirements for new and essential security algorithms and product interfaces by including hardware acceleration for SHA-2, AES-GCM and KASUMI algorithms, and PCI-Express interface in a single chip. The NITROX PX security processors feature the GigaCipher v2 cores with increased code store and enhanced hardware queuing, which enables richer protocol processing and multi-protocol performance. All products are fully software compatible with Cavium Networks market-leading NITROX family of security processors and are offered with either a PCI-X 64/133 interface that is NITROX family pin-compatible or PCI-Express x4 interface. The NITROX PX Family delivers the industry's most scalable symmetric encryption performance, ranging from 500 Mbps to 2.5 Gbps, and asymmetric performance from 4000 to 17,000 RSA operations per second. Existing customers of Cavium Networks' NITROX Lite products can seamlessly upgrade to the NITROX PX PCI-X version and get the benefits of new algorithms, higher performance and new features. The PCI Express version enables customers to upgrade to new generation motherboards with PCI-Express interfaces. The NITROX PX Security Processors are being adopted by Tier-1 vendors for security and networking appliances, routing, L3+ switching, storage and wireless products. Cavium Networks will present details on the NITROX PX security processor family on Sept 21st at the Linley Group's Embedded Network Security Design Seminar, being held in San Jose, California.
Related Channels: Security, Chipsets, Wireless, Storage, Switching & Routing

Worldwide ECB disk storage revenue totaled $3.6 billion in 2Q06
Worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage revenue totaled $3.6 billion in the second quarter of 2006, a 4.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to Gartner, Inc.
EMC maintained the No. 1 spot finishing the quarter with 23.8 percent of the market. IBM and Hewlett-Packard were locked in a tight race for second and third place this quarter, respectively. IBM maintained its worldwide ECB market share at 14.6 percent, while increasing its revenue by 4 percent year-over-year. HP’s market share (also at 14.6 percent) fell by 1.5 percent year-over-year. Hitachi/HDS maintained its No. 4 ranking with an 8.3 percent share of the market, while increasing its revenue by 5.8 percent year-over-year. Sun Microsystems took over the No. 5 spot with 7.6 percent market share, just barely ahead of Dell and Network Appliance, both at 7.5 percent.
Network Appliance experienced the strongest growth year-over-year among the top-tier vendors, with 22.2 percent revenue growth. “Sun’s revenue growth of 13.8 percent year-over-year continues to be primarily the result of its acquisition of StorageTek in the third quarter of last year,” said Donna Taylor, principal analyst for Gartner’s global Storage Quarterly Statistics program.
Related Channels: Storage

LSI expands SAS and SATA storage adapter offering by 50%
LSI Logic Corporation has introduced six new SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and SATA (Serial ATA) adapters to its family of storage controller cards. With these new products, the portfolio of LSI SAS and SATA adapters now addresses the full spectrum of server, workstation and enterprise storage interconnection requirements.
Building on the company's HBA product line, LSI released three SAS adapters, including a new line of low-cost SAS PCI Express HBAs. Each features integrated RAID (IR), which supports RAID levels 0, 1, 1E and 10E (enhanced mirroring) for increased system reliability. When combined with the high-reliability attributes of SAS, the new HBAs offer higher performance and higher availability for storage environments where a full RAID implementation is not required or is cost prohibitive. Each of these new products offer 3 Gb/s SAS/SATA connectivity.
For the MegaRAID product lines, LSI unveiled two new SATA RAID adapters and a SAS zero-channel RAID (ZCR) adapter. The SATA adapters provide transfer rates up to 3 Gb/s per port in a low-profile adapter, addressing the growing demand for RAID in high-density rack mount chassis environments. The SAS adapter supports SAS connectivity to SAS and SATA drives, enabling large, tiered SAS/SATA storage arrays to provide the data protection and performance advantages of RAID 5. The new SAS card has also received broad support from more than a half-dozen leading motherboard manufacturers, combining LSI SAS technology on the motherboard with LSI market-leading RAID technology.
The new HBA and MegaRAID adapters complement the existing LSI portfolio which now offers 18 unique SAS and SATA products, making the family the most comprehensive set of SAS/SATA connector configurations and RAID feature offerings available today. The new adapters featuring PCI-Express remove PCI host bus bottlenecks by providing a high-speed 2.5 Gb/s connection.
"With the addition of these new SAS and SATA controllers, LSI is addressing customers' connectivity requirements for direct attached storage and small networked storage," said Luca Bert, director of DAS RAID product management, Engenio Storage Group, LSI Logic. "LSI is the only company with a complete portfolio of storage adapters in SAS and SATA."
Related Channels: Storage

Intel announces plans for restructuring
Intel announced plans for restructuring following an analysis of the company's structure and efficiency
Intel Tuesday announced plans for restructuring following an analysis of the company's structure and efficiency. As a result of the restructuring, the company expects to generate savings in costs and operating expenses of approximately $2 billion in 2007. In 2008 the company expects savings from this restructuring to grow to approximately $3 billion annually.
The savings are a combination of non-workforce related steps and a significant reduction in Intel's workforce. The company's employee population will decline to approximately 95,000 by the end of this year, resulting from workforce reductions, attrition and previously announced actions. The workforce will decline to approximately 92,000 by the middle of 2007 -- 10,500 fewer than the company's employee population at the end of the second quarter of 2006. In addition to the savings from the workforce reduction, the company expects savings in merchandising expenses, capital and materials.
"These actions, while difficult, are essential to Intel becoming a more agile and efficient company, not just for this year or the next, but for years to come," said Paul Otellini, Intel president and chief executive officer.
Related Channels: Chipsets

LSI Logic intros 6 new SAS and SATA (Serial ATA) adapters
LSI Logic Corporation introduced six new SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and SATA (Serial ATA) adapters to its family of storage controller cards. With these new products, the portfolio of LSI SAS and SATA adapters now addresses the full spectrum of server, workstation and enterprise storage interconnection requirements.
"With this major expansion of its storage adapter line, LSI now offers complete SAS and SATA coverage for both direct attached or networked storage configurations," said Brian Babineau, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Technology transitions such as PCI Express and Serial Attached SCSI create inflection points where LSI has the ability to differentiate from the competition, and the company has once again done so with its new storage adapters."
Building on the company's HBA product line, LSI released three SAS adapters, including a new line of low-cost SAS PCI Express HBAs. Each features integrated RAID (IR), which supports RAID levels 0, 1, 1E and 10E (enhanced mirroring) for increased system reliability. When combined with the high- reliability attributes of SAS, the new HBAs offer higher performance and higher availability for storage environments where a full RAID implementation is not required or is cost prohibitive. Each of these new products offer 3 Gb/s SAS/SATA connectivity.
For the MegaRAID product lines, LSI unveiled two new SATA RAID adapters and a SAS zero-channel RAID (ZCR) adapter. The SATA adapters provide transfer rates up to 3 Gb/s per port in a low-profile adapter, addressing the growing demand for RAID in high-density rack mount chassis environments. The SAS adapter supports SAS connectivity to SAS and SATA drives, enabling large, tiered SAS/SATA storage arrays to provide the data protection and performance advantages of RAID 5. The new SAS card has also received broad support from more than a half-dozen leading motherboard manufacturers, combining LSI SAS technology on the motherboard with LSI market-leading RAID technology.
The new HBAs and MegaRAID adapters complement the existing LSI portfolio which now offers 18 unique SAS and SATA products, making the family the most comprehensive set of SAS/SATA connector configurations and RAID feature offerings available today. The new adapters featuring PCI-Express remove PCI host bus bottlenecks by providing a high-speed 2.5 Gb/s connection.
"With the addition of these new SAS and SATA controllers, LSI is addressing customers' connectivity requirements for direct attached storage and small networked storage," said Luca Bert, director of DAS RAID product management, Engenio Storage Group, LSI Logic. "LSI is the only company with a complete portfolio of storage adapters in SAS and SATA."
Related Channels: Storage

Exeros secures additional $12 million
California-based Exeros, Inc., an innovator in data mapping and automated data relationship discovery software, announced today it has secured an additional $12 million in a Series B round of private equity financing. This round of funding is led by AllianceBernstein Holding L.P., with Exeros' original investors Bay Partners and Globespan Capital Partners participating. The Series B round of funding will be used to grow the sales team, add sales coverage in new geographies and to grow the engineering team in order to extend the product line.
"Exeros has an experienced management team, is pursuing a large market opportunity with a product that solves a 40-year old problem, and is already in production at some of the largest companies in the world," said Jamie Kiggen, senior vice president, AllianceBernstein L.P.
"Large companies need to understand how data relates across the enterprise before they can ensure data consistency or improve security," said Piyush Gupta, co-founder and CEO, Exeros. "This is a problem regardless of industry, and one of growing importance. Exeros addresses these serious issues by discovering the relationships between datasets. Understanding where data is and the relationships between systems is the foundation for strong data governance initiatives."
Related Channels: Storage, Funding

IBM qualifies Brocade
Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. announced that the Brocade SilkWorm(R) 48000 Director and the SilkWorm 4100 Switch are now fully qualified for 4 Gbit/sec use with IBM System z(TM) family servers that support FICON(R) Express4. This latest qualification for the SilkWorm 48000 and SilkWorm 4100, marketed by IBM as the IBM TotalStorage SAN256B and the IBM TotalStorage SAN32B-2, respectively, further enhances the FICON support these products achieved for the IBM System z9 and all FICON Express platforms in October 2005.
The latest FICON connectivity is designed to enable SilkWorm 48000 customers to leverage a widely used Input/Output (I/O) interface for mainframe computer connections to storage devices. Organizations can use a single platform for both open systems and IBM System z server storage networks, with the ability to securely and flexibly intermix open systems and mainframe connectivity. The new benefits to FICON Express4 customers include increased I/O capacity, faster data transfer rates between mainframe servers and storage devices, and simplified management. In addition, FICON overcomes the speed and distance limitations of ESCON connectivity, IBM's previous fiber optic channel standard, for storage systems in mainframe environments.
"The latest FICON certification for Brocade's high-performing SilkWorm family of SAN infrastructure solutions extends and simplifies storage capabilities for mainframe customers," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.
Related Channels: Storage

Vestel selects LSI solution for new DVD recorder products
California-based LSI Logic Corporation, the pioneer in media processing technology, announced that Vestel A.S., a leading manufacturer of consumer electronic (CE) products for the European market, has selected the LSI DoMiNo® DMN-8603 DVD recorder system processor for its new line of DVD recorder products. The market-leading feature set and high integration level of the DMN-8603 processor enables Vestel to offer affordable DVD recorders with superior audio and video quality that are optimized for Europe, the largest regional DVD recorder market.
"We are pleased that Vestel, a leading European CE manufacturer, selected the LSI DoMiNo processor for their new line of DVD recorder products," said Tim Vehling, vice president of marketing, Consumer Products Group, LSI Logic. "Vestel's choice of DMN-8603 reinforces LSI leadership in the global DVD recorder market and our ability to deliver the right products at the right time to the fast-growing European market."
LSI offers a range of highly integrated DoMiNo DVD recorder system processors for either high-performance or entry-level devices. Key features include: MPEG-4 encoding and decoding, DivX® certified playback, integrated IEEE-1394 (Direct Digital Dub®) interface, high-speed dubbing from HDD to DVD, and motion compensated noise reduction of analog video inputs for the highest-quality video.
LSI products enable leading technology companies in the Storage and Consumer markets to deliver some of the most advanced and well-known electronic systems in the market today.
Related Channels: Storage, Video, Chipsets

Emulex to acquire Sierra Logic
Emulex Corporation and Sierra Logic, Inc. have signed a definitive agreement whereby Emulex will acquire Sierra Logic, Inc., a leading provider of embedded ASIC components and firmware solutions for enterprise storage systems.
The acquisition of Sierra Logic expands Emulex's position in the market for embedded multi-protocol storage products. Sierra Logic's current product portfolio, which includes embedded bridges and routers, enables connectivity of low-cost Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) disk drives within Fibre Channel-based enterprise storage systems. Further, these products are deployed by the world's leading OEMs in conjunction with Emulex's existing InSpeed embedded switches and I/O Controller (IOC) products to provide a fully complementary embedded end-to-end solution.
"This acquisition solidifies Emulex's embedded multi-protocol strategy and is another critical step toward becoming the market leader in the end-to-end embedded storage components market. The expansion of our embedded product portfolio also provides incremental revenue opportunities and we believe extends Emulex's addressable market for embedded storage components to more than $800 million, and the Company's total available market to $2.7 billion by 2009,"' said Paul Folino, Chairman and CEO of Emulex.
Under the terms of the agreement, Emulex will acquire Sierra Logic for a transaction value of up to approximately $180 million in cash, assumed debt and assumed Sierra Logic stock options, plus employee equity incentive compensation. The board of directors and shareholders of Sierra Logic have approved the acquisition and it is expected to be complete on or near September 30, 2006, subject to certain closing conditions. Sierra Logic consists of approximately 70 employees, primarily engineers based in Roseville, California.
Related Channels: Storage, Mergers & Acquisitions

Sun integrates StorageTek
Continuing to combine its storage assets into a single offering, Sun Microsystems has integrated the StorageTek(TM) TekCare support program into the SunSpectrum(SM) support portfolio, resulting in the availability of Sun StorageTek(TM) Service Plans. With the new Sun StorageTek Service Plans, Sun is providing an enriched set of capabilities that address customer needs for continuous data availability and reliable, responsive customer care. The new Sun StorageTek Service Plans are a component of the SunSpectrum Support portfolio which also includes Service Plan options for Sun systems and software, including the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS).
The Sun StorageTek Service Plans combine the best of both the TekCare and SunSpectrum programs, including integrated hardware and firmware telephone support and hardware on-site maintenance service as well as providing one-stop interoperability support for multi-vendor environments, remote diagnostic and resolution services, firmware updates, and 24/7 access to Sun's eLearning Library and customer resource centers. Designed to address heterogeneous storage environments, the new plans support Sun storage products in DAS, NAS or SAN storage architectures.
“With the merger of the TekCare program into SunSpectrum, Sun has reached another milestone in the integration between Sun and StorageTek. The new Sun StorageTek Service Plans deliver a rich set of resources designed to ensure customers will continue to get the world-class service and support they've come to expect and rely on,” said Nigel Dessau, vice president of Storage Marketing and Business Operations, Sun Microsystems. “Sun is committed to helping customers focus on running their business knowing that the information they need to make better decisions will be available when and where they need it.”
Related Channels: Storage, OSS/BSS

QLogic CEO to present at Citigroup's Global Technology Conference
California-based QLogic Corp., the leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), stackable switches and blade server switches, announced that HK Desai, CEO and president, and Tony Massetti, senior vice president and CFO, will present at Citigroup's 13th Annual Global Technology Conference on Wednesday, September 6 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time in New York. The conference will be held at the Hilton New York at 1335 Avenue of the Americas.
The company also announced that Tony Massetti, senior vice president and CFO, and Rick Franz, vice president of technology and planning, will present at the 2006 Morgan Keegan Equity Conference on Thursday, September 7 at 10:10 a.m. Central Time in Memphis, Tenn. The conference will be held at the Peabody Hotel.
The presentations can be accessed through live and archived webcasts via the QLogic web site.
Related Channels: Storage

Competition Alert for Microsoft, HP, Sun Microsystems, EMC, Oracle, SAP, CA, Wipro, BMC, Novell, BEA, McAfee, Citrix and other OSS, security software and storage vendors: IBM to speed up its China expansion after moving its Asia Pacific Headquarters to Shanghai from Tokyo this year
IBM will open four offices annually in second-tier Chinese cities in coming years to take advantage of robust growth and a deep talent pool.
“We set up four new offices last year,” Michael Cannon-Brookes, vice-president for business development in China and India, said on Wednesday. “And that pace is sustainable in the near term.”
IBM had 22 offices in China at the end of last year.
Any expansion would come after IBM's Asia-Pacific office completed its move to Shanghai from Tokyo this year, attracted by vibrant growth and deep talent pools in China.
“That’s why I’m in Shanghai,” said Cannon-Brookes.
Related Story: Top Story: IBM moves its Asia-Pacific HQ to Shanghai from Tokyo -- Shanghai, the most favorable city for multinationals (A reprint of our 05/12/2006 Top Story)
Related Channels: China

(A reprint of our 05/12/2006 Top Story) Top Story: IBM moves its Asia-Pacific HQ to Shanghai from Tokyo -- Shanghai, the most favorable city for multinationals
IBM has moved its Asia-Pacific headquarters from Tokyo to Shanghai, China's business hub. Since 2005, IBM has been relocating its relevant technical and R&D departments for Asia-Pacific headquarters to Shanghai.
Last month, IBM joined hands with Shanghai Jiaotong University in establishing an innovative academe, in an effort to establish IBM's R&D center as well as a procurement center in Shanghai.
The explosive growth of China market is a reason for IBM's relocation of Asia-Pacific headquarters. In 1993, IBM purchased USD 30 million worth of products in the country, while the procurement in 2000 exceeded USD 2 billion.
Related Top Story: China to surpass the United States to become the world's No.1 chip market this year (China)
Shanghai is the most favorable city for multinationals.
Related Stories on Shanghai
- Top Story: Shanghai is becoming the hot spot for global chip industry (China)
- Shanghai hosts IBM's IT Services Center (China)
- Shanghai hosts Samsung's international purchasing center (China)
- Top Story: Shanghai Information Park built by China Telecom with CNY 10 billion investment attracts telecom and IT companies -- China Telecom in transformation beyond traditional telecom business (China)
- Shanghai to host Virgin Mobile's MVNO service base (China)
- Shanghai to host AT&T's first Internet Data Centre in China (China)
- Shanghai to host STMicroelectronics' Greater China headquarters (China)
- Unisys to open office in Shanghai and invest more than $200M over the next five years (China)
- Siemens to establish its Eastern China HQ in Shanghai (China)
- Top Story: Intel Global R&D HQ in Shanghai started operation (China)
- BenQ to move Asia-Pacific HQ to Shanghai (China)
Related Channels: China

Hitachi Global Storage bolsters its SATA hard disk drive
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has bolstered its field-tested and award-winning 3.5-inch Deskstar® 7K500 Serial-ATA (SATA) hard disk drive to achieve an enterprise-class rating. Uniquely designed to provide enterprise-class reliability, the Deskstar 7K500, now E7K500, SATA 500 GB hard disk drive delivers one million hours Mean Time Between Failure1 (MTBF) and the industry’s most comprehensive five-year warranty.
With this offering, Hitachi allows enterprise customers to take advantage of the Deskstar E7K500’s high reliability, high capacity and low cost per gigabyte for tiered storage, RAID configurations and disk-to-disk backup. The proven combination of Hitachi’s leading Ultrastar® enterprise-class server products and the Deskstar E7K500 nearline storage solution provides customers with a complete enterprise serial portfolio that spans high-capacity and mission-critical, ultra high-performance applications.
“The Deskstar E7K500 delivers field-proven reliability and performance for a range of nearline enterprise applications that require the right mix of functionality at a low cost per gigabyte,” said Jose Antelo, vice president and general manager, business management, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
Related Channels: Storage

Hitachi Data Systems appoints Brenda Peffer as Global Marketing VP
California-based Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, the leading provider of Application Optimized Storage(TM) solutions and a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. announced the appointment of Brenda Peffer as vice president of Global Marketing. Peffer joins Hitachi Data Systems from HP where she served nine years. At HP, Peffer held several Director of Marketing roles with responsibility for driving revenue growth for HP's Enterprise Software, Hardware and Services.
In this position, Peffer will lead a team responsible for Hitachi Data Systems' voice to the market. She will also assume responsibility for all field marketing around the globe, ensuring Hitachi Data Systems' sales and channel teams can continue to drive the strong growth and results that has come to be expected.
"Brenda's proven track record and strong balance of channel and marketing skills are the right mix required to help continue on our pattern of upward momentum; as well as solidify the company's brand stewardship as an industry-leading global provider of storage management solutions," said Scott Genereux, executive vice president and general manager of Worldwide Sales, Marketing, and Support.
Related Channels: Storage

AMCC completes Quake acquisition
Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) has completed the acquisition of Quake Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) PHY technology. As a pioneer in the 10GE PHY technologies, Quake was the first company to successfully deliver an entire production- worthy product line for a broad range of distances, from short to long reach.
"We are pleased to announce the successful completion of this acquisition. We look forward to integrating our technology and customer assets in order to develop 10G Ethernet solutions for the Enterprise and Service Provider markets," said Kambiz Hooshmand, president and CEO of AMCC. "Our strategy is focused on converged information and storage networks based on IP and Ethernet. As a result of this acquisition, AMCC is now a leader in the 10G Ethernet market."
Under the terms of the agreement, AMCC acquired all outstanding shares of Quake for approximately $69 million in cash (net of Quake's estimated cash and receivables that AMCC assumed in the deal). AMCC plans to consolidate its design groups in Ottawa into a single facility and continue to benefit from the experienced engineering talent of the Ottawa area.
Related Channels: Chipsets, Ethernet, Storage, Mergers & Acquisitions

iVivity names Tom Burniece CEO and raises additional $10M
Atlanta-based iVivity, the leading provider of storage network building block technologies, including industry leading iDiSX(R) storage network processors, software and custom board solutions to system OEMs, has named Tom Burniece to the position of CEO.
Burniece brings more than 30 years of storage industry experience to iVivity including positions in executive management and senior engineering management as well as business consulting and Board of Directors appointments across a spectrum of Fortune 500 and startup companies. "As iVivity enters this critical phase of delivering on its design wins and the intensification of research and development, Tom Burniece brings an extraordinary arsenal of management experience and industry contacts to help the company exploit its leadership position and realize its full potential," said Bruce Bergman, Chairman of iVivity's Board of Directors.
"As an early member of iVivity's Board of Advisors, I became a big believer in the company's technology and market potential a long time ago," said Tom Burniece. "I am extremely pleased to come on board in a hands-on capacity to lead the company in this exciting next phase of growth."
iVivity also announced an additional $10 million investment with all current investors participating. The additional funding will be used to sustain the company's operations as revenue ramps from iVivity's recent design wins, as well as bring to market its next generation products and expand its world class engineering capabilities.
Related Channels: Storage, Chipsets, Funding, Appointments

Competition Alert for HP: IBM to acquire Internet Security Systems (ISS) for $1.3 billion
IBM and Internet Security Systems, Inc. announced the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Internet Security Systems, Inc., a publicly held company based in Atlanta, Ga., in an all-cash transaction at a price of approximately $1.3 billion, or $28 per share. The acquisition is subject to Internet Security Systems, Inc. shareholder and regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Internet Security Systems (ISS) provides security solutions to thousands of the world's leading companies and governments, helping to proactively protect against internet threats across networks, desktops and servers. ISS software, appliances and services monitor and manage network vulnerabilities and exploits and rapidly respond in advance of potential threats. This acquisition advances IBM's strategy to utilize IT services, software and consulting expertise to automate labor-based processes into standardized, software-based services that help clients optimize and transform their businesses.
This acquisition also reinforces IBM's position in the rapidly growing area of Managed Security Services. With concerns ranging from data theft to implementing and managing increasingly complex regulatory requirements, addressing IT security has become one of the most complex challenges companies are facing, regardless of size, location or industry.
Related Channels: Security, Mergers & Acquisitions

IPLocks secures additional $4.4M
San Jose-based IPLocks, a leading provider of database security and compliance solutions that protect business critical information, has secured an additional $4.4 million in funding from institutional and individual investors as a result of over-subscription to its recent Series D round of funding.
"IPLocks was founded on the belief that protecting sensitive data in company databases is crucial for business survival," said Akio Sakamoto, President, CEO and Co-founder of IPLocks. "We are pleased to see that investors realize the value of the IPLocks offering and are validating the opportunity for this market by investing in IPLocks."
IPLocks is the only comprehensive database security solution that assesses for vulnerabilities, monitors user behavior and provides an independent audit trail to support regulatory compliance. The IPLocks solution also supports the widest range of database platforms including IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase and Teradata.
Related Channels: Security, Storage, Funding

BlueArc integrates LSI Logic's storage arrays into its network storage systems
BlueArc Corporation has qualified and integrated the latest storage arrays from LSI Logic into its high-performing Titan 2000 network storage systems. The new storage arrays, shipping immediately, deliver increased storage performance and density to customers, feature a 4-gigabit data pipeline, more throughput on both reads and writes, and RoHS compliance.
The new Engenio storage arrays from LSI extend BlueArc’s leadership in tiered storage. More than three years ago, BlueArc was one of the first companies to offer both the highest performance Fibre Channel arrays and high density Serial ATA (SATA) arrays together in the same integrated system. Now, BlueArc continues its leadership by offering support for both Fibre Channel and SATA arrays that can be managed by the same RAID controller.
The new arrays, coupled with BlueArc’s leading data migration software, enable large scale automated data movement based on a rich set of predefined rules or policies without any impact on end-users, forming a critical keystone for implementing dynamic data lifecycle management.
“BlueArc Titan 2000 customers are leading the way in delivering unique solutions to today’s tremendous data growth and the management challenges it creates,” said Steve Daheb, vice president of marketing and business development for BlueArc. “With the adoption of LSI 4Gbps arrays, our customers now have access to the most flexible storage solutions on the planet, designed to deliver the highest performance and capacity in a small footprint, saving them time, space and money.”
With the new arrays, BlueArc now offers a range of Fibre Channel and SATA drives from 73 gigabytes up to 500 gigabytes per drive, including the latest in SATA II technology for enhanced SATA performance.
“Scalability in both capacity and performance is essential in today’s data-driven businesses, and BlueArc has been a leader in the industry with its Titan 2000 storage systems, offering an innovative approach to the network storage market,” said Steve Gardner, director of product marketing, Engenio Storage Group, LSI Logic. “With BlueArc’s adoption of LSI 4 Gbps storage systems, users have received a significant performance boost to their digital pipeline, while ensuring seamless upgrades in the future as capacity demands increase.”
Related Channels: Storage

NetXen's 10-GigE NIC chip in volume production
California-based NetXen Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced that NetXen's 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) Intelligent NIC(TM) chip is now in volume production.
"The enterprise datacenter is on a verge of a major shift to 10GbE," said Govind Kizhepat, NetXen's founder and CEO. "Our relationship with TSMC enables NetXen to answer the growing demand for 10GbE NIC technology in the Agile Datacenter(TM). As the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, TSMC has the process technology and manufacturing capability to address this demand."
The NetXen Intelligent NIC products are the industry's first dual-port 10GbE solutions with native PCI Express (PCIe) functionality. The products are software- and firmware-upgradeable, unlike existing hardwired solutions. This enables server systems equipped with Intelligent NIC technology to readily evolve with changing market needs and adapt to different datacenter workloads. The products provide IT managers flexibility and investment protection in an ever-changing technology environment. Top-tier system suppliers, such as HP and IBM, plan to incorporate NetXen's Intelligent NIC technology in products currently under development.
Related Channels: Chipsets, Ethernet, Storage

AT&T announces SONET and Ethernet services contract with Evanston
AT&T Inc. Friday announced a new optical services contract with Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH), an academic health system comprising three hospitals and 65 medical offices and facilities. Evanston Northwestern Healthcare is located in Chicago's northern suburbs.
Under the terms of the five-year contract, AT&T will deliver a Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) ring, which is an optical-fiber network backbone; and GigaMAN(R) service, which is a dedicated fiber-optic Ethernet service. Together, these services will enable ENH to open a new data center, thereby converting the existing facility into a backup data location for added security and increased redundancy of the ENH network. This solution will protect ENH against possible service outages, which would be detrimental to this virtually paperless institution.
The expanded bandwidth and increased reliability, via the converged network infrastructure, will ensure constant access to the network's critical applications and directory of patient records. Additionally, the optical network will enable ENH to continue to provide highly available voice and data connectivity to hospitals and medical offices.
"We are virtually a paperless healthcare institution, so constant access to our voice and data communications is essential to our operations," said Tom Smith, CIO of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. "The solution provided by AT&T safeguards against detrimental service outages by delivering increased uptime for our network and core applications, enabling our staff to focus on our number one priority -- delivery of excellent patient care."
Related Channels: SDH/SONET, Ethernet, Storage

Cisco settles shareholder lawsuit for $91.8 million
Cisco Systems said Friday it would pay $91.8 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit filed in 2001 against the company and management in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
"Given the expense and disruption associated with prolonged litigation, and the fact that this resolution is achieved with no additional cost to Cisco and with the consent of our insurance carriers, we believe this settlement is in the best interest of Cisco and its shareholders," Cisco said.
The original suit, filed April 20, 2001, claimed that Cisco made misleading statements, or omitted statements of material fact, that were relied on by purchasers of Cisco stock, the company said. The suit also alleged that the individual defendants sold Cisco stock while in possession of material, non-public information. The company denied all allegations in the suit.
Related Channels: Storage

Silicon Space joins Google Enterprise Professional Program
San Diego-based Silicon Space Inc., a leading provider of custom web-based software solutions has joined the Google Enterprise Professional Program and launched a new business practice focused on enterprise search solutions utilizing the Google Search Appliance. As a trained member of the Google Enterprise Professional Program, Silicon Space will create custom Google search solutions that deliver fast, intuitive access to the information buried within the enterprise.
For ten years, Silicon Space has been using the latest web technologies to create customized, integrated software solutions for large enterprises like Disney, Harcourt, the U.S. Navy and Cohn & Wolfe, an international public relations agency.
Recently, Cohn & Wolfe wanted to increase competitive advantage by making corporate information more accessible to their worldwide network of management and sales professionals. Silicon Space custom built a corporate intranet, extranet, internet portal and then installed, configured, customized and integrated the Google Search Appliance to provide fast, intuitive access to the organization's information assets located across a variety of disparate applications and data sources.
"Robust, proven enterprise search solutions are becoming more critical for large enterprises as the volume of data generated by ERP, SFA, CRM and other systems increases exponentially," explained Kevin Harris, COO of Silicon Space. "Silicon Space's partnership with Google and the launch of our Enterprise Search Practice have a common goal of delivering the best technology, expertise and integration experience to our clients -- allowing them to harness the power of their enterprise information."
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage

HP stock surges to a new year high on strong earnings particularly from software sales
Hewlett-Packard Co.'s stock surged to a new year high Thursday after the company reported a Q3 profit that beat expectations, raised its Q4 and full-year guidance.
HP shares rose 72 cents, or 2.1 percent, to close at $35.15 on the New York Stock Exchange.
HP CEO Mark Hurd was bullish about HP's prospects after announcing fiscal third-quarter profit that easily beat Wall Street's expectations. The results were announced Wednesday after financial markets closed.
For the three months ended July 31, HP earned $1.38 billion, or 48 cents a share, compared with $73 million, or 3 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
Excluding one-time items, the company earned $1.48 billion, or 52 cents per share, up nearly 40% from the same quarter last year.
Software sales were particularly strong, with 30% year-over-year growth. The company, which sold $318 million in software last quarter, will likely complete the acquisition of management software company Mercury Interactive Corp. in the current quarter.
HP competes fiercely against IBM Corp. for corporate clients that spend billions of dollars on giant computer servers and data storage.
For Q4, HP now expects to earn 57 cents to 59 cents per share, or 61 to 63 cents per share excluding items. For the full year, the company expects earnings in a range of $2.14 to $2.16 per share, or $2.31 to $2.33 per share excluding amoritization charges.
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage

US DOJ picks AppSecInc's vulnerability assessment scanner
New York-based Application Security, Inc. (AppSecInc), the leader in database security, announced that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is utilizing the company’s vulnerability assessment scanner, AppDetective™ to reduce and manage database vulnerabilities throughout the agency.
Speaking about the decision to deploy AppSecInc’s solution, Dennis Heretick, chief information security officer for the DOJ said, “Our philosophy is one of building security into the operational process and building our validation testing into the implementation process. Tools such as AppDetective allow us to identify vulnerabilities in the [database] application and then verify that we have corrected them.”
“AppSecInc enables the DOJ to ground compliance efforts in the database applications that ultimately house its regulated data,” said Jack Hembrough, president and CEO of AppSecInc. “By establishing database controls, documenting their status, and promptly identifying violations, AppSecInc helps government organizations define best practices, document continuous improvement, and ensure prompt incident response – the hallmarks of any demonstrable, repeatable and effective compliance effort.”
Related Channels: Security, Storage

Altera, Sarance, Cortina unveil FPGA-based Interlaken IP core for switches, routers and storage equipment
Altera Corporation, design services provider Sarance Technologies and communications semiconductor specialist Cortina Systems Monday announced the availability of the industry’s first FPGA-based Interlaken intellectual property core to speed design of network systems applying the Interlaken protocol.
The Interlaken protocol IP core, created by Sarance Technologies, lets communication and storage network equipment developers apply the new interconnect specification using Altera® Stratix® II GX FPGAs. Together, the IP and FPGAs enable more cost-effective solutions for 10-, 20-, and 40-Gbps interconnect designs in next-generation network switches, routers and storage equipment.
The Interlaken protocol is a royalty-free specification jointly developed by Cortina Systems and Cisco Systems for makers of high-performance network components and equipment. The specification builds upon the logical structure of SPI-4.2 interface technology, now widely used in networking equipment. It preserves the capabilities of SPI-4.2 with multiple logical channels and back-pressure information, while eliminating its bandwidth ceiling and curtailing associated pin-count cost. Interlaken’s 90 percent chip-to-chip signal trace improvement increases performance and reduces both board and chip design costs.
Interlaken allows greater integration in network system designs by providing a framework for channelized packet interfaces built upon a flexible and highly efficient serialization/de-serialization (SERDES) physical layer. Using the latest 6.375-Gbps SERDES technology enables interface designs that scale from 10 to 100 Gbps and beyond.
Related Channels: Chipsets, Switching & Routing, Storage

Microsoft's Tim Chen joins LSI Logic board
LSI Logic Corporation Monday announced that it has elected Timothy Y. Chen to its board of directors, effective September 1, 2006. He is currently Microsoft's corporate vice president and CEO, Greater China Region, responsible for overseeing overall Microsoft business operations and strategy in China. Chen's addition to the LSI Logic board expands its membership to nine.
"With the addition of Tim to our board, the breadth of our expertise and insight into the growing market opportunities for information storage and consumer electronics in Greater China is significantly strengthened," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI Logic president and chief executive officer. "Tim is a well known and widely admired business leader throughout the region and his guidance will be especially valuable to us as we pursue increasing opportunities there."
Chen is the former chairman and president of Motorola (China) Electronics, Ltd., a position he held from September 2001 until joining Microsoft Corporation in September 2003. From June 2000 until September 2001, Chen was CEO of 21CN CyberNet Corporation Ltd., with overall responsibility for its business in Hong Kong and Mainland China. From 1992 to 2000, he held various management and executive positions with Motorola China and was additionally named a Motorola corporate vice president in 1999. Previously, Chen was with the Bell Labs arm of Lucent Technologies (formerly AT&T, Inc.) in the United States, serving in a number of technical and marketing management capacities.
Chen earned an MBA from the University of Chicago and holds two master's degrees in computer science and mathematics from the Ohio State University, Columbus.
Related Channels: Storage, OSS/BSS

Guangzhou to build large government database backup and catastrophe recovery center
Following the hacking of three of its websites, Guangzhou municipal government has decided to choose a secret location in the surrounding cities to build a large government database backup and catastrophe recovery center to help prevent disasters from damaging the city's government platform.
The project is planned to cover an area of several thousand square meters and cost over RMB100 million. It will take at least two years to complete. The data backup center is like a "super brain" which collects all the data on government affairs in Guangzhou.
The center will not participate in the daily operations of the government. However, it will play a backup role if the e-government systems are destroyed by man-made or natural disasters.
So far, 50 government agencies in Guangzhou have placed their data online to give citizens better access to public information and the online data will be integrated into the new backup system.
Related Channels: China, Security, Storage

20% Q:Q 4Gb Fibre Channel HBA growth widens market share lead for QLogic
California-based QLogic Corp., the leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), ranked number one and gained ground in every category of 2Gb and 4Gb Fibre Channel HBA market share, according to the Dell’Oro SAN Report Q1/06. For the first time QLogic exceeded 50 percent market share by shipping 50.8 percent of all Fibre Channel HBA ports in Q1 2006. QLogic almost passed the 50 percent mark for overall Fibre Channel HBA revenue with 49.9 percent market share. In the important new market for 4Gb HBAs, which will dominate shipments in the years ahead, Dell’Oro estimates that QLogic achieved quarter over quarter growth of 20.1 percent, resulting in a leading 4Gb HBA port market share of 48 percent.
"Underlying the Dell’Oro data for the 4Gb and 2Gb market segments is customer demand in key arenas where QLogic pioneered and leads in new technology," said Roger Klein, vice president and general manager, QLogic Corp. "According to our estimates, QLogic has earned over 80 percent of the Linux, VMware server virtualization and blade server Fibre Channel HBA markets."
"A Better 4Gb" HBA from QLogic
SANblade 4Gb HBAs form QLogic offer a suite of technology advancements that help storage administrators in large enterprises ensure complete business continuity, maintain application performance and cost-effectively scale their networks.
For Better 4Gb Reliability:
Less Heat Production - SANblade Pro 2400 Series FC HBAs consume less power and produce less heat than competitive offerings so no additional cooling is required and reliability is greatly improved.
Overlapping Protection Domains - This QLogic exclusive ensures that data is not left unprotected, even for the smallest fraction of time, by generating a new check of parity or ECC before stripping out the old check. This offers a superior level of protection, well beyond traditional implementations.
HBA Failover with Linux - To protect data even if there is a component failure, QLogic uniquely offers Linux drivers that provide customers with automatic failover and fail back between redundant HBAs.
For Better 4Gb Performance:
Intelligent Interleaved DMA - Unlike round-robin schemes for transmitting data in a mixed 1Gb/2Gb/4Gb environment, QLogic HBAs detect the link rate that each target can support and transmit simultaneously, and at maximum performance, to each storage device.
Dual Read DMA - QLogic HBAs simultaneously process multiple DMA requests, which helps accelerate the I/O performance in real-life applications like Oracle and Exchange. (For more information on performance reports visit http://www.qlogic.com/products/hba_better4Gb.asp)
Out Of Order Frame Reassembly - Only HBAs from QLogic reassemble frames within an exchange in the correct order, even though they may have been received out of order. This improves performance by eliminating the need to retransmit the entire I/O block.
For Better 4Gb Scalability:
Virtual SAN (VSAN) - This QLogic exclusive allows a single HBA to read VSAN tags in packets sent from a Cisco MDS switch. As a result, QLogic HBAs can support multiple VSANs, each with a completely isolated fabric topology and set of fabric services including name server, zone server, domain controller, alias server and login server.
For Better Ease of Use:
More HBA Information - QLogic 4Gb SANblade Pro HBAs feature three LED’s that display each HBA’s current speed. A unique bracket design provides information on type of bus and the worldwide port name (WWPN) to end users without removing the HBA from the server. QLogic beaconing makes the process of locating a specific HBA in the datacenter much easier.
Related Channels: Storage

QLogic SANblade 4Gb HBAs 33% faster with Oracle
QLogic Corp., the leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), stackable switches and blade server switches, today announced that its SANblade™ 4Gb Fibre Channel HBAs deliver 33 percent higher performance with Oracle® workloads than the leading competitor. Using database driven Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), Web, and Analytical Processing (OLAP) workloads common in datacenters, test results validate that QLogic 4Gb HBAs outperform the competition in business critical application environments. A white paper with a detailed description of the test environment and results can be downloaded from www.qlogic.com/knowledgecenter/briefs_papers.asp.
“SAN administrators in Global 2000 corporations are asking for application-oriented performance data to help them architect 4Gb SANs,” said Roger Klein, vice president and GM at QLogic. “The results of this testing show that QLogic 4Gb HBAs outperform the competition and meet the performance requirements of the most demanding Oracle environments.”
Oracle Performance Test Summary
To correlate the benchmark tests to today’s business requirements, QLogic selected market-leading Oracle Relational Database Management Systems running on Microsoft® Windows 2003™ Enterprise Edition – a very popular, highly scalable enterprise configuration. Real-world performance was tested using the EMC Clariion CX3000™ storage array. The HBAs were housed in a Dell® PowerEdge™ 6850. The Dell server was connected through a QLogic SANbox™ 5600 series 4Gbps switch to an enterprise storage array with 15 disks of 10,000 RPM total capacity, and alternately to a RamSan-400 with 32 GB total capacity. Using the RamSan solid state disk removed the latency introduced by a slower disk-driver and allowed QLogic to proof the performance expected from next-generation storage arrays.
Related Channels: Storage

IBM to acquire FileNet for $1.6 billion
IBM and FileNet Corporation have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire FileNet, a publicly held company based in Costa Mesa, Calif., in an all-cash transaction at a price of approximately $1.6 billion, or $35 per share. The acquisition is subject to FileNet shareholder approval, regulatory reviews and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006.
FileNet is a leading provider of business process and content management solutions. This acquisition builds upon IBM's Information on Demand initiative, launched in February 2006, to address the growing market opportunity around combining IBM's software, services, partners and industry consulting expertise to improve clients' business performance. The Information on Demand strategy aims to provide clients with data exactly when and how they need it to improve their business processes, quickly respond to market needs and rapidly identify new business opportunities.
A convergence of challenges facing businesses today - including globalization, mergers and acquisitions, information overload and regulatory compliance -- are driving companies to find new ways to gain insight from their information so they can use it to grow their business. IBM's acquisition of FileNet aims to further the company's Information on Demand initiative, IBM's strategy for addressing this growing market opportunity.
"Freeing up information contained in content management systems is critical to unlocking the potential of information to improve business processes and performance," said Ambuj Goyal, general manager, IBM Information Management. "The combination of IBM and FileNet will provide our customers and partners with industry-focused content management solutions that offer a new level of business value."
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage, Mergers & Acquisitions

Sun Microsystems intros Sun StorageTek modular storage family
Sun Microsystems, Inc. introduced the Sun StorageTek (TM) modular storage family and the first two products in the family -- the Sun StorageTek (TM) 6140 and 6540 arrays. The StorageTek 6140 array delivers 2x the density and the StorageTek 6540 array delivers 2x the performance of competing solutions. For midsize-to-enterprise customers who need to support business-critical applications, Sun's quick-deploy modular storage line delivers non-disruptive flexibility, complete system availability, lower overall costs, and fast time to business benefit. As the first new products to be released under the combined Sun StorageTek roadmap, the modular family incorporates the best of both companies -- heterogeneous service and support expertise from StorageTek and end-to-end systems expertise from Sun.
The StorageTek modular storage family is designed for customers seeking to support business-critical applications and for Service Providers looking for a cost-effective, easy-to-use enterprise-class platform with the ability to confidently handle large data sets.
"With the right balance of enterprise-class functionality and price, it's obvious why modular storage has become an attractive data center option. Today, Sun is taking it to the next level with a family of modular storage arrays that exceeds the rigorous requirements of business-critical applications and surpasses the performance, density and flexibility of existing modular systems," said Paul Giroux, vice president, Storage, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Related Channels: Storage

Huawei ranks No.3 among the top 100 Chinese non-state-owned enterprises listed by the Chinese version of Forbes
The Chinese version of Forbes, a magazine that tracks the world's wealthy, has officially released a list of top Chinese enterprises, the first survey conducted by it on Chinese non-state-owned enterprises with annual sales revenues of more than CNY 5 million.
Among a total of 100 firms on the list, Legend Holdings Limited and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. rank among the top 3.
Legend Holdings heads the list with total assets of CNY 62.3 billion, sales revenues surging 107% to CNY 108.2 billion, and an above average profit of up to CNY 2.05 billion. The third one is Huawei, which has owned total assets of CNY 49 billion, sales revenues of CNY 40.5 billion with a growth of 39%, and a profit of CNY 4.07 billion coming to the fore.
Related Channels: China, Switching & Routing, WDM, VoIP, VPN, xDSL, Video, FTTP, Ethernet, Wireless, OSS/BSS, Security, Cable MSO, SDH/SONET, Storage

Critical Links' “Business Gateway” solution running on Cavium OCTEON processors
Critical Links award-winning edgeBOX 4.0 will support the latest generation of Cavium Networks OCTEON single and dual core MIPS64® -based processor family. The combined solution offers a high-performance, cost-efficient software and hardware solution to OEM & ODM vendors and service providers looking to deliver complete converged voice and data network services for SMEs and Branch Offices. A demo of the edgeBOX software platform running on Cavium's new OCTEON processors will be shown to vendors in August.
“Integrating our edgeBOX solution with Cavium's new OCTEON processor family ensures joint-customers will receive the highest level of performance and fastest time to market in a cost-effective platform,” said João Carreira , Critical Links' CEO. “The edgeBOX is an “all in one” intelligent networking device allowing SMEs and remote branch offices to benefit from the latest converged networking technologies without the need for specialist in-house IT knowledge.”
A high-performance software and hardware solution to vendors and service providers looking to deliver complete converged voice and data network services for SMEs and Branch Offices
edgeBOX enables Telcos and Service Providers to deliver everything an SME or Enterprise Branch Office (EBO) needs in one integrated platform, at a lower cost of ownership, without compromising security, scalability or ease of management. When deployed at the edge of a customer's network, edgeBOX allows a Managed Service Provider to remotely provision, support and maintain voice and data services such as a fully featured IP-PBX and VoIP gateway, security, QoS, collaboration, WiFi, router and file storage.
Related Channels: Chipsets, Security, VoIP, Storage

IBM intros DS4200 Express for SMB
IBM Wednesday boosted the scalability, capacity and performance of its industry leading IBM® System Storage™ DS4000 Series by introducing a new model – the DS4200 Express– as well as major enhancements across its other systems focused on the storage needs of small and medium sized businesses (SMB). The new DS4200 Express and the expanded DS4000 products will both help clients create optimal tiered data storage strategies and offer robust data protection and duplication features.
The DS4200 Express provides low total cost of ownership (TCO), high performance, robust functionality and unmatched ease of use for SMBs and enterprise workgroups. New options and features are also available across a range of other products within the DS4000 Series product line, a family of scalable storage systems designed to accommodate the changing value of data over time, while maintaining data availability.
“Today’s announcement tackles the hottest segment of the storage market with new systems, performance, scalability and unrivaled cost savings for companies of all sizes,” said Barry Rudolph, vice president storage portfolio management, disk, and software. “With the latest additions to the DS4000 series, clients can now find the solution they need with the right focus on reliability, capacity and price.”
Related Channels: Storage

Axeda selected with Raytheon to support TSA
Foxboro, Mass.-based Axeda Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise software that enables manufacturers to offer high-value remote services for their products today announced that it has been selected with Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC, to support the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on Phase 1 of its Security Technology Integration Program (STIP). Axeda will provide the Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) enterprise management solution that will communicate data and images to approximately 1,200 TIP Ready X-ray (TRX) systems deployed at 80 airports across the country.
Axeda's VeriSign security certified solution will provide for administrative and technical communications such as Threat Image Projection (TIP) library updates, equipment and operator performance downloads, remote operation, and centralized system software updates.
"Axeda's commitment to security in our technology, our processes, and our services has enabled our success in industries with stringent security requirements, such as enterprise storage and homeland security," said Dale Calder, president and CEO, Axeda Corporation. "Our patented and scalable solution will allow the TSA to easily manage and consolidate the maintenance of diverse and geographically dispersed security devices, pulling everything into a unified support system and optimizing critical equipment performance."
Related Channels: Security, Storage

3Com: "Can we have more?"
3Com announced that it will begin negotiations with Huawei with the intent to increase 3Com's ownership stake in Huawei-3Com (H-3C).
3Com currently owns 51% of H-3C and recently began consolidating H-3C's financial results.
Under the terms of existing agreements, each party has the right, commencing on November 15, 2006, to initiate a bid process to purchase the equity interest in H-3C held by the other. These negotiations are intended to result in an agreement outside of the bid process.
"Our joint venture in China is a growing and profitable enterprise that we believe can be an important cornerstone of 3Com's future," said 3Com Chairman, Eric Benhamou. "We intend to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement that increases 3Com's stake in H-3C and promotes H-3C's continued success."
Related Channels: China, Switching & Routing, VoIP, VPN, Security, Storage

3Com appoints Edgar Masri as CEO and Bob Mao as EVP
3Com Corporation announced that the company's Board of Directors has appointed Edgar Masri as the new President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to replace Scott Murray who submitted his resignation effective at the close of business on August 17, 2006. The company also announced that it has hired Bob Mao as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development to manage 3Com's interests in its China-based joint venture with Huawei Technologies, Huawei-3Com (H-3C).
Masri, who is currently the Chief Operating Officer for Redline Communications, a broadband technology company, and Mao will join the company on August 18, 2006. In addition to his role as President and CEO, Masri will assume Murray's position as Chairman of H-3C. In his new role, Mao, a widely recognized and highly regarded networking executive, based in China, will be a member of H-3C's Board of Directors and report directly to Masri. Mao currently is Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Pacific Telecommunications Council. Consistent with its plan to further leverage H-3C to help increase shareholder value, 3Com also today announced that it will begin negotiations with Huawei with the intent to increase 3Com's ownership stake in H-3C. 3Com currently owns 51 percent of H-3C and recently began consolidating H-3C's financial results. Under the terms of existing agreements, each party has the right, commencing on November 15, 2006, to initiate a bid process to purchase the equity interest in H-3C held by the other. These negotiations are intended to result in an agreement outside of the bid process.
"Our joint venture in China is a growing and profitable enterprise that we believe can be an important cornerstone of 3Com's future," said 3Com Chairman, Eric Benhamou. "We intend to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement that increases 3Com's stake in H-3C and promotes H-3C's continued success."
Benhamou added, "After gaining additional insight into the significant time commitment and attention necessary to successfully manage H-3C, Scott Murray advised the Board that, with his young family, he was not able to commit to the extended time in China the venture requires. He therefore believes it is in 3Com's best interest for him to resign at this time, before negotiations begin. The Board respects his decision and thanks Scott for taking steps to bring the company closer to profitability.
"We are very fortunate to be able to recruit Edgar Masri to lead the company. Edgar has extensive networking industry knowledge, broad international experience and a track record of success throughout his career. Edgar brings unique skills and experiences that we believe will be of great value to 3Com."
Related Channels: Appointments

Brocade to acquire McDATA for $713 million
Brocade and McDATA have entered into a definitive agreement whereby Brocade will acquire McDATA in an all stock transaction. Under the terms of the agreement, McDATA stockholders will receive 0.75 shares of Brocade common stock for each share of McDATA class A common stock and each share of McDATA class B common stock they hold. Based on Brocade's closing stock price on August 7, 2006, the transaction is valued at approximately $4.61 per McDATA share, or approximately $713 million. Upon completion of the transaction, McDATA stockholders will own approximately 30 percent of Brocade. The transaction is expected to be tax-free to McDATA stockholders.
Michael Klayko, Brocade CEO, said, "Today marks an important milestone in Brocade's continued success as a strategic provider to the enterprise customer. This combination will accelerate the pace of innovation, enable us to build stronger relationships with our customers and partners, and provide greater scale and efficiencies to accelerate our growth. We believe this is a strategic combination that will benefit our customers and create value for our combined stockholders."
"We believe this combination is a win for our customers and our investors," said John Kelley, McDATA chairman, president and CEO. "For our customers, it provides the investment protection and a clear path to next generation data center products and technologies. For our stockholders, it presents an attractive premium and the ability to participate in the combined company's future value creation potential."
Related Channels: Storage, Mergers & Acquisitions

Kazeon raises $21M
California-based Kazeon, the leader in Unstructured Information Management, has received $21 million in its third round of venture capital financing, bringing the total investment in the company to $44 million. The investment syndicate includes Menlo Ventures, who led the round, and Focus Ventures with all existing investors increasing their investment in this round of financing. This funding round, in response to growing market demand, will allow Kazeon to expand US and International sales, marketing, and engineering to accelerate its time to profitability.
“Menlo Ventures carefully evaluated many companies delivering information management solutions and we are convinced Kazeon is the clear leader of the pack,” said Arvind Purushotham, managing director of Menlo Ventures. “We invest in industry leaders that have the potential to alter the landscape and provide innovative solutions to customers. Kazeon solutions for enterprise search, information governance, and ILM are field proven and solve real customer problems.”
“Firmly entrenched as a leader in unstructured information management, Kazeon demonstrates a clear understanding of customer problems and delivers strategic solutions for data privacy, security, and legal discovery,” said Kevin McQuillan, general partner of Focus Ventures. “With its rapidly growing customer base, we believe the company will continue to accelerate revenue growth and strengthen its leadership position.”
“Kazeon welcomes the additional support from Menlo, Focus and all of our original investors in this over-subscribed round of funding,” said Sudhakar Muddu, CEO & founder of Kazeon. “Our undeniable momentum in the industry has paved the way for this successful round of funding and we are delighted for continued support from our investors and the welcome addition of Menlo and Focus Ventures as new investors.”
Related Channels: Storage, OSS/BSS, Funding

Teranetics appoints Matt Rhodes as CEO
California-based Teranetics Inc., a privately held company that provides next-generation, standards-based 10-gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) copper channel semiconductor solutions, Monday announced that Matt Rhodes has been appointed CEO. Company founder, Sanjay Kasturia, was named CTO.
Prior to joining Teranetics, Rhodes was president of Conexant Systems, Inc., a publicly traded worldwide leader in semiconductor solutions for broadband communications and the digital home.
"Teranetics is an outstanding company, and I'm excited about being the newest member of a world-class team," Rhodes said. "In a relatively short time, the company has firmly established itself as the pioneer and leader in 10-gigabit Ethernet, an emerging technology that enables a 10x increase in data rates over simple twisted pair copper. The Teranetics team played key roles in the committee that developed the IEEE 10GBASE-T Ethernet standard ratified in June, and is now demonstrating standards-based solutions to key customers worldwide."
"Under Matt's leadership, Teranetics will achieve the next level of success," said Sanjay Kasturia. "With Matt on board, we now have a team that has both the technical knowledge and business experience to take our state of the art technologies to market winning product positions."
Rhodes, 48, became president of Conexant in June 2003. Prior to that, he was president of the company's Broadband Communications business. He also served as senior vice president and general manager of the company's Personal Computing Division. Prior to joining Conexant, he was director of VLSI technology at Pacific Communication Sciences, Inc.
Rhodes received a master's degree in business administration from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University, and a bachelor's degree in physics from Pennsylvania State University.
Related Channels: Chipsets, Ethernet, Storage, Appointments

CacheLogic, BitTorrent partner on P2P
CacheLogic, the market leader in peer-to-peer (P2P) caching solutions for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and BitTorrent, developer of the world's leading peer-assisted file distribution platform, announced a key strategic partnership to further enable the widespread adoption of P2P technology as a distribution network for commercial video and other rich digital content.
Most notable in this collaboration is the development of the Cache Discovery Protocol (CDP) - an open-source protocol that ISPs can utilize to mitigate the burden of BitTorrent traffic in an era marked by heightened awareness of network neutrality. CDP will enable BitTorrent client software to automatically discover and take advantage of caching devices within an ISP's network to significantly accelerate the delivery of legitimate content whilst reducing costs.
Related Channels: Video, Storage

Citrix Systems to acquire Orbital Data
Florida-based Citrix Systems, Inc. Monday announced a significant expansion of its end-to-end application delivery strategy, making it faster, simpler, and more cost-effective to deliver applications to users in branch offices and other remote locations. As a cornerstone of this strategy, Citrix announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Orbital Data Corp., a leading provider of solutions that optimize the delivery of applications over wide area networks (WANs). As an emerging leader in the fast-growing WAN optimization market, Orbital Data® gives Citrix best-in-class technology as well as a strategic presence at the entry point to branch offices worldwide. The all-cash consideration payable to the shareholders of Orbital Data Corp. is approximately $50 million, and the acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2006. The company also assumed approximately 0.3 million unvested stock-based instruments each of which upon vesting will be exercisable for the right to receive one share of the company's common stock.
Upon close of this acquisition, Citrix plans to reintroduce the Orbital Data product line under the Citrix WANScaler brand. The new Citrix WANScaler team will become part of the company's Application Networking Group headquartered in San Jose, California, which is responsible for appliance-based solutions such as Citrix® NetScaler®, Citrix Access Gateway(TM) and Citrix Application Firewall.
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage, Mergers & Acquisitions

Toshiba, SanDisk to invest $5.2B in new NAND plant
Toshiba Corp., the world's fourth-largest microchip maker, and California-based SanDisk Corp., the world's top supplier of flash memory data storage cards, will invest a total of about 600 billion yen ($5.2 billion) to build a new flash memory plant in Japan to meet ballooning demand, Toshiba said on Friday.
Demand for NAND flash memory chips is expanding rapidly as their ability to retain data after power is shut off makes them an ideal storage device for a wide range of portable electronics.
"No other microchip seems to be growing as fast as NAND. We have decided to build a new plant to meet this rapid market growth," Toshiba Corporate Vice President Shozo Saito said.
Toshiba and SanDisk will first spend about 300 billion yen on the new plant over two business years through March 2008. The new plant will start production in the October-December quarter of 2007 with a monthly capacity to process 2,500 units of cost-efficient 300-mm wafers. The companies then plan to boost capacity to 67,500 wafers by October-December 2008.
The maximum capacity at the new plant, to be located in western Japan's Mie prefecture, is estimated to come to 150,000 wafers a month, which would be 36% bigger than the full capacity at the existing 300-mm plant built by the two companies.
Related Channels: Chipsets, Storage

Komag promotes Tim Harris to CEO
San Jose-based Komag, Incorporated, a leading independent supplier of thin-film media for disk drives, announced, that its Board of Directors has completed its search for a new chief executive officer to succeed T.H. Tan, who had previously announced his intention to retire by the end of 2006. The Board has appointed Timothy Harris, the Company's chief operating officer, as the new chief executive officer effective October 1, 2006. Mr. Harris has been the Company's chief operating officer since October of 2005 and has many years of executive leadership experience in the hard disk drive industry.
Additionally, Mr. Harris has been appointed as a member of the Board of Directors effective October 1, 2006 to serve as a Class III Director in place of Mr. Tan who will be resigning as of such date.
T.H. Tan, Komag's retiring chief executive officer, said, "I am very pleased that Tim has been appointed as the Company's new chief executive officer. Since joining the Company, Tim has demonstrated his in-depth experience in leading world-wide operations and provided outstanding leadership during the Company's continuing expansion of its manufacturing capacity. Tim also brings a significant industry background, which includes experience leading Seagate's recording heads operations on site in Malaysia for several years."
"Tim's operational experience and industry knowledge are tremendous strengths and we are confident that Tim's leadership will further Komag's on-going commitment to technological innovation and manufacturing excellence," said Dr. Richard Kashnow, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Komag.
The Company had previously announced in February 2006 that Mr. Tan planned to retire in late 2006. Mr. Tan intends to work closely with Mr. Harris, the Company's management team and the Board of Directors to insure a seamless transition.
Related Channels: Storage, Appointments

IBM to acquire MRO Software for $740M
IBM and MRO Software, Inc. have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire MRO Software Inc., a publicly held company based in Bedford, Mass., in an all-cash transaction at a price of approximately $740 million, or $25.80 per share. The acquisition is subject to MRO Software shareholder and regulatory reviews and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006.
MRO is the leading provider of asset and service management software and consulting, used by many of the world's top companies to efficiently manage how they buy, maintain and retire assets - such as production equipment, facilities, transportation and information technology (IT) hardware and software - in a wide variety of industries including utilities, manufacturing, energy, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications. This acquisition builds upon IBM's strategy to leverage business consulting, IT services and software to develop repeatable tools that help clients optimize and transform their businesses.
As more types of corporate assets are touched by technology, companies are looking for ways to consolidate how they manage these assets - both operational and IT-related. IBM's acquisition of MRO addresses this need by providing customers with a consistent, comprehensive set of asset management solutions and services. MRO asset management technology and consulting services will be integrated into IBM Software and IBM Global Services offerings. As a result of the acquisition of MRO, IBM will be the only company to provide the solution to this convergence of IT and industrial assets.
"In a recent IBM study, 40 percent of CEOs indicated that asset utilization would be a key focus in strengthening financial performance," said Al Zollar, general manager, IBM Tivoli software. "MRO software is a powerful addition to IBM's portfolio of software and services. This acquisition will provide companies with a single view into all of their assets, helping them to maximize efficiencies, drive productivity, and innovate business processes across the enterprise."
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage

Netezza names Jim Baum as President and COO
Framnigham, Mass.-based Netezza has named former Parametric Technology Corp. (PTC) and Endeca senior executive Jim Baum to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer (COO). Baum, who also joins the board of directors, will report to Jit Saxena, Netezza's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder, focusing on operational growth and scaling as the Company builds on its success at the forefront of the data warehouse appliance market.
Prior to Netezza, Baum was president and CEO of Endeca, building the Company during his five-year tenure to more than 270 customers. Previously, as executive vice president and general manager at PTC, Baum helped drive the Company's growth to more than $1 billion in revenues during his 11-year tenure.
"As an experienced veteran of growth companies, Jim was a natural choice as Netezza continues to scale operations to meet growing demand for our groundbreaking data warehouse appliances," said Saxena. "Jim joins one of the most experienced and talented management teams in the industry, arriving at a time when more and more companies continue to adopt Netezza as the critical backbone for a new generation of data-rich business analytics."
Related Channels: Storage

EMC gets U.S. antitrust approval to acquire RSA Security
Data storage maker EMC Corp has received U.S. antitrust approval to acquire the digital security company RSA Security Inc.
RSA sells key-chain-sized SecurID devices. Antitrust authorities completed their review of the nearly $2.1 billion deal without taking any action to block it.
On June 29, EMC agreed to buy Massachusetts-based RSA Security as part of its strategy to diversify into software.
Related Channels: Security, Storage, Mergers & Acquisitions

BEA, BMC, Cisco, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun publish Service Modeling Language (SML)
BEA Systems Inc., BMC Software Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Inc., EMC Corp., HP, IBM Corp., Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Monday announced they have published a draft of a new specification that defines a consistent way to express how computer networks, applications, servers and other IT resources are described -- or modeled -- in extensible markup language (XML) so businesses can more easily manage the services that are built on these resources.
As a result of collaboration, the open, industrywide specification defines a common language for expressing information about IT resources and services. Called the Service Modeling Language (SML), the specification enables a hierarchy of IT resource models to be created from reusable building blocks rather than requiring custom descriptions of every service, thus reducing costs and system complexity for customers. The group plans to submit the draft specification to an industry standards organization later this year.
SML addresses a growing industry need as a result of the numerous methods of representing the same IT resource. Besides being inefficient, the use of different formats leads to two problems. First, because the tools and management applications use different formats, they don't speak the same language. Therefore the information must be translated, which can lead to the loss or misinterpretation of technical details. Second, the use of different formats may require IT architects to use written descriptions or sketches to convey information about resources. Such descriptions must then be translated into a form that tools and management applications can consume, which is a manual, error-prone process.
SML has two unique properties that make it well-suited for modeling IT resources and services: support for rich constraints and alignment with XML message exchange architectures. SML allows developers to build modeling information for applications, devices and services that can be used during all stages of the application or service life cycle, such as configuration, problem, change and release management. They are also useful for tactical processes such as management of service levels, availability and capacity. The SML specification will provide simplicity, integration and compatibility throughout this life cycle for all components of an IT environment.
Related Channels: OSS/BSS, Storage

Sun StorageTek Enterprise Class 4Gb FC PCI Express ExpressModule HBA from QLogic now shipping
California-based QLogic Corp., the leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), stackable switches and blade server switches, Monday announced the Sun StorageTek(tm) Enterprise Class 4Gb FC PCI Express ExpressModule HBA from QLogic is now shipping. The innovative new hot plug PCI Express HBA form factor can be added or removed without powering down the server or opening the server chassis. This allows Sun Microsystem's Sun Blade(tm) 8000 modular systems running the Solaris(tm) 10 Operating System (OS), Linux and Windows to deliver unprecedented up-time for enterprise servers in a storage network, as well as industry leading HBA performance of 300,000 I/Os per second.
"Adding and removing conventional HBAs is disruptive to business because powering down and opening servers is required," said Michael McNerney, director of blade servers, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "For businesses that want to eliminate downtime, the ExpressModule HBA from QLogic is an essential component of their high availability SAN architecture."
Related Channels: Storage