Tag: EMC

EMC cosies up to SAP

Posted on May 13, 2013 by - News

cosyEMC has announced that it is moving to help its customers move workloads of SAP services to a next gen private cloud infrastructure.

The company also claims its helping to build a foundation for private cloud computing, which it hopes will keep it cosy with SAP and VMware by integrating their respective services capabilities and helping customers accelerate full-lifecycle transformation of SAP applications to virtualized x86 environments.

According to the company the new additions could help and IT companies and operations by simplifying the design, planning and operation of on-premise cloud computing infrastructures that take advantage of the latest EMC, SAP and VMware technologies.

Through a combination of services and products EMC, together with SAP and VMware, wants to enable customers running SAP solutions to simplify IT management and focus on innovation and competitive advantage while reducing costs. It says that its services tailored for private cloud optimisation of SAP products will help customers making the transformation to on-premise cloud computing to maximise productivity of SAP application-based workloads by documented the key components of a virtual stack designed to support a virtualised private cloud environment running SAP services.

The EMC Proven Solution for automated disaster recovery of SAP solutions is also claimed to outline how to extend private cloud infrastructures for disaster recovery across heterogeneous storage infrastructure as well as how to perform non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans. It is said to combine EMC RecoverPoint with VMware Site Recovery Manager to help provide customers disaster recovery using VMAX and VNX series interchangeably as production and disaster recovery storage for SAP applications.

Working in collaboration with SAP and VMware, EMC is also offering services designed to quickly and safely move workloads of SAP solutions to virtualized x86 environments that are high performing, easier and less expensive to manage.

Supply chain standard aims to eliminate counterfeit gear

Posted on April 18, 2013 by - News

server-racksCounterfeit iPhones, sunglasses and handbags have been around for years, but so have counterfeit IT products, and they tend to be a bit more dangerous and costly than a fake Gucci bag crafted from genuine imitation faux leather.

The Open Group has published a new technical security standard with the aim of improving supply chain safety and weeding out counterfeit products, or gear that has been tampered with. The Open Trusted Technology Provider Standard (O-TTPS) is a 32-page document containing a set of guidelines, requirements and recommendations that should mitigate the risk of acquiring counterfeit products, or products that were “maliciously tainted.”

The standard is being backed by the likes of IBM and Cisco. It should address concerns raised by governments and the US Department of Defense, which tends to be rather picky when it comes to networking gear. Junipar, Huawei, EMC, Raytheon, HP, Microsoft, the NSA, Booz-Allen Hamilton, Boeing and NASA are also on board, reports Network World.

It is still unclear when the group will start issuing accreditations, or how it plans to go about it, but the backers feel that the IT industry should get acquainted with the new standards. With such high profile names on board, the industry should listen closely.

Big outfits are expected to embrace the new standard first, but in doing so they will also reduce the risk for smaller businesses. Still, the best way of steering clear from dodgy routers and switches is to simply avoid buying gear from unknown companies altogether.

Lenovo to sell servers and storage

Posted on April 3, 2013 by - News

lenovo-logoLenovo, the world’s second largest PC maker, is planning to revamp its business strategy and refocus on its server and storage business over the next three years.

The PC slump has been hurting Lenovo, Dell and Hewlett Packard for several quarters and all traditional PC markers are now trying to reinvent themselves.

Dell wants to go private, HP is waiting for inkjet printers to make a comeback, while Lenovo seems keen focus on everything other than PCs.

Although its latest announcement indicates that Lenovo will make a serious enterprise server and storage push, it should be noted that the company is also betting big on smartphones and tablets. However, we don’t get to see that many of them in Europe, but Lenovo’s mobile gear is doing incredibly well in parts of Asia. In fact, Lenovo’s smartphone business accounts for about 20 per cent of the company’s revenue in mainland China, reports China Daily.

“We are looking for future profit generators, and the enterprise-level server and storage markets will surely fill that need,” said Chen Xudong, senior vice-president and general manager of Lenovo China. However, Chen stopped short of outlining Lenovo’s expectations for its server and storage gear.

The storage strategy seems off to a good start. On Tuesday Lenovo and EMC released their first co-branded server and storage products. The two outfits formed a joint venture last year to shift server and storage gear. It is hoped that the EMC alliance will help Lenovo fend off challenges from ZTE and Huawei in the Chinese market.

External storage up despite PC downturn

Posted on March 8, 2013 by - News

hdd-hugeAlthough PC sales fell off a cliff last year, makers of external disk storage seem to have had a rather good year. According to IDC’s latest disk storage report, revenue increased 4.7 percent in 2012, with a 2.3 percent year-on-year increase in Q4.

Worldwide sales totalled $24.7 billion last year, and total disk capacity shipped during the year surpassed 20 exabytes, up 27 per cent over 2011.

“FICON attached array sales and network attached storage (NAS) both helped drive the factory revenue increase during the quarter as companies invested in storage required to support mainframe environments and to deal with the continued growth in unstructured data,” said Eric Sheppard, IDC storage research director.

The open networked disk storage market grew 2.6 percent year-on-year in Q4 to hi $5.7 billion in revenues. EMC maintained its lead with a 30.7 percent revenue share in Q4, trailed by IBM and NetApp with 15 per cent and 11.6 percent respectively. HP and Hitachi tied in fourth position with market shares of 9.3 and 8.8 percent respectively. However, HP and Hitachi were the only players in the top five to lose share in Q4 2012.

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market EMC reigned supreme with a 24 percent share, followed by IBM and HP, in a statistical tie for second spot with 16.2 and 16 percent respectively. Dell and Netapp ranked fourth and fifth.