Archive for the ‘Datacenter’ Category

IBM to buy SUN

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

IBM Global Services

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In the past, IBM has mostly focused its acquisition efforts on companies that will bolster its software and services businesses, rather than its hardware, but that may change. IBM is currently in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems offering to pay Sun at least $6.5 billion, or double Sun’s Tuesday closing price of $4.97, according to a report on Reuters.

If the two companies can reach a deal, it will be IBM’s largest-ever acquisition, pushing the company to the forefront of the high-end computer server market. Many analysts see the potential deal as a recent trend in consolidating major brands, where server equipment providers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Cisco Systems compete for the lucrative corporate data center market to supply network equipment to high-end computers.

It has long been speculated that Sun would be bought out by a major IT company, and the company has been seeking a buyer in recent months, according to bankers. So far, IBM is leading the data center market as top supplier of servers in the fourth quarter of 2008, with a market share of 36.3 percent, says market researcher IDC.

Trailing behind in second place is HP with 29.0 percent, followed by Dell with 10.6 percent, Sun with 9.3 percent, and Fujitsu with 4.2 percent.
With Sun’s shares falling 71% in the past year, it says it would soon be cutting around 6,000 jobs, or 18 percent of its workforce.

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Can you access your PC anywhere in the world?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Google, Inc.
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Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports.  But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals’ personal data.

The Google Drive, or “GDrive”, could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user’s personal files and operating system could be stored on Google’s own servers and accessed via the internet.

The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as “the most anticipated Google product so far”.

It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world’s computers, in favour of “cloud computing“, where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.

Home and business users are increasingly turning to web-based services, usually free, ranging from email (such as Hotmail and Gmail) and digital photo storage (such as Flickr and Picasa) to more applications for documents and spreadsheets (such as Google Apps). (more…)

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Going beyond Hand Scanning - Vein Recognition

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
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At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, Fujitsu showed off a new idea in security-minded technology that the Japanese company argues could make the fingerprint an obsolete symbol of personal data: vein-pattern recognition.

Put your hand over a computer’s mouse and an infrared camera shines an invisible light onto — and through — your palm.

By measuring where that light is absorbed and reflected, the system maps the veins in your hand, a collection of crisscrossing lines that Fujitsu claims can reliably identify a user far more accurately than scanning the whorls or loops on his or her fingertip.

That innovative system, which Fujitsu calls Palmsecure, has been sold in its mouse-embedded form in the U.S. since August of last year.

It’s not cheap: A single mouse and software setup costs around $430 US.

But according to Fujitsu’s tests, vein pattern recognition can identify a user on the first try 99.99 per cent of the time and mistakenly approves the wrong user in only .00008 per cent of cases, far less often than fingerprint scanners.

“To get beyond this in terms of accuracy, you’d have to look to DNA,” says Joel Hagberg, Fujitsu’ vice president of marketing and business development.  Vein pattern recognition is the latest — and in some respects, most promising — attempt to reach the holy grail of cybersecurity, what professional digital paranoiacs call “three-factor” authentication.

To prove users’ identity and keep out intruding data thieves, a system would test them based on something they know (say, a password), something they have (such as the RSA tokens that show an encrypted, changing series of numbers) and, perhaps trickiest of all, something they are — a “biometric” test of their physical characteristics.

That last factor has traditionally meant verifying a fingerprint, or in some high-security government settings, a high-resolution photograph of an iris.  As cumbersome as that three-step process sounds, it may be increasingly important in keeping data secure, particularly in the business world. (more…)

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HP and Cisco Providing End to End Datacenter Solutions

Thursday, January 29th, 2009
SAN JOSE, CA - AUGUST 8, 2005: (FILE) The Cis...
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Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems had a good run together, but the relationship is headed toward a rocky future, as both giants move forward with plans to steal away business from each other’s core markets.

The showdown between the two Silicon Valley titans and long-time partners may not evolve into all-out warfare immediately.  But recent developments are clearly realigning what was once a cozy relationship and are setting the pair up for an epic collision.

The world’s largest PC-maker announced a slate of news around the HP ProCurve business that includes a new class of switches for data centers, new data center management software and a new program called HP ProCurve ONE, which optimizes corporate applications for HP’s networking infrastructure.

The news helps counter recent reported moves by Cisco this month to expand into data centers by entering the server market, one of HP’s core businesses.  Cisco is working on a server product that will incorporate switching, application processing and virtualization software in one piece of hardware, according to several reports.

The two are converging on the data center, trying to create an end-to-end offering for the large facilities that house computer and telecommunications systems.  Cisco has been strong on the networking side, connecting the data centers, while HP has been a major seller of the servers that populate the facilities.  Now, both are trying to be the primary vendor for customers as they build their centers.

Are end to end solutions really best for the datacenter, and can one vendor be great in everything?  How do customers feel about going to a networking manufacturer for their servers and vice-versa?

 

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Where is eBay’s New Datacenter?

Friday, January 23rd, 2009
Image representing eBay as depicted in CrunchBase
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Online auction site eBay has chosen a suburb of Salt Lake City as the site for a $334 million data center project. The company said yesterday that it has purchased land in South Jordan, Utah in the Daybreak Commerce Park, not far from whereOracle Corp. (ORCL) is building a huge data center.

The state Office of Economic Development offered eBay $27.3 million in tax incentives over 10 years to build the facility in Utah, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The data center is expected to create about 50 jobs with wages averaging $49,200 a year, about 50 percent above the Salt Lake County annual median wage.

The facility, which could be as large as 250,000 square feet, would continue a regional expansion that has seen eBay acquire a large data center in Phoenix and expand its facility in Denver. (more…)

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