Peter Williams on IT-Analysis.com

"Mainframes don't de-dupe": Shoden shows 'em how it's done

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:00:00 +0100

The mainframe world has not so far gained from the various benefits of data de-duplication during backup and replication; but Shoden Data Systems' solution, launched last week, plugs this gap. [Read More...]

Double-Take's take on low-cost DR: back up the lot with rock solid reliability

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:00:00 +0100

While CDP is good for doing low-cost file replication, including to remote locations, the OS and applications need also to be recoverable for DR; absolute reliability is another factor; take Double-Take's word [Read More...]

Beat the credit crunch with software that saves

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:00:00 +0100

As the credit crunch gets worse, the software vendors destined to do well are those able to show their customers a quick ROI and saving [Read More...]

SEPATON shows how partial post-process de-dupe can score over in-line

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:00:00 +0100

There is more than one way to skin a cat; SEPATON certainly skins the de-duplication cat differently - and offers some compelling reasons for its approach [Read More...]

Can ONStor's green Cougar pounce on the enterprise?

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:00:00 +0100

ONStor has released its low-energy Cougar NAS gateway and storage device and will use it to attack the enterprise market for the first time. Can it succeed and what are the management implications? [Read More...]

Good infrastructure discovery is more pressing than CMDB, says Tideway

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Many large organisations implementing CMDBs now realise it will take years for them to become up-to-date and accurate; for now they need automated discovery like Tideway's Foundation [Read More...]

How Data Domain de-dupe is upping its nearline capabilities

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Storage de-duplication market leader Data Domain is finding new ways to exploit the massive disk capacity savings and make de-dupe's case unanswerable. [Read More...]

SNIA Academy's presentations hit the storage target

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:00:00 +0100

The SNIA academy came to London last week, and provided a real feast of knowledge for IT storage management buffs. Here are some titbits that particularly caught my attention [Read More...]

How to make GRC management enterprise-wide

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Most large enterprises' systems for collecting risk and compliance data are not uniformly installed enterprise-wide; they need to be. It is not easy to change this but OpenPages thinks it has cracked the problem [Read More...]

Calling all CIOs: would you like some software designed just for you?

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:00:00 +0100

IT infrastructure management solutions typically carry lots of bells and whistles, and are good for fire-fighting in a 24/7 real-time world. But what is the real value to the hapless CIO? One vendor has spotted a market niche. [Read More...]

DataDomain boosts de-dupe power and capacity, and answers critics

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:00:00 +0100

De-duplication should be on every major company's agenda, and specialist vendor DataDomain's new model is a demonstration to larger competitors of how de-dupe should be done [Read More...]

Has SNIA's XAM missed the ILM target?

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:00:00 +0100

The main reason why ILM is still only a goal is unknown file content that cannot be used to place files in the right storage tiers or extracted appropriately for compliance. XAM doesn't solve this. [Read More...]

An emerging network management headache: analysing ever-faster networks

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:00:00 +0100

Real-time protocol analysers are struggling to keep up with ever-faster - and more complex - networks. (Or as network managers might say: is Sniffer becoming a dog?) What can be done? [Read More...]

3PAR architecture turns low-cost SATA drives into tier 1 storage

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:00:00 +0100

There is an increasing trend towards iSCSI and low-cost high capacity SATA disks; 3PAR thin provisioning is exploiting this to reduce on-line application costs at the expense of fibre channel. [Read More...]

CA Recovery Management r12 converges backup, high availability and DR - and maybe the market

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:05:00 +0100

A lot of thought went into producing CA Recovery Management r12 which includes ARCserve and XOsoft makeovers; but will the marketplace embrace combined backup/recovery/replication/DR? [Read More...]

Juniper Networks attacks large enterprises with new switches and approach

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:00:00 +0100

Last week Juniper Networks launched a ground-breaking set of Ethernet switches for enterprises - a new range and target market. Juniper's software holds the key to success. [Read More...]

Optim's structured ILM and EDM blend makes a unique market niche

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 07:00:00 +0100

Princeton Softech's Optim has an application focus, handling only structured files and databases but achieving a unique enterprise data management (EDM)/information lifecycle management (ILM) blend [Read More...]

Stormy times for your networks? Time to re-assess your network management software

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:00:00 +0100

All sorts of new technological challenges are making it ever more difficult to manage networks. Network management suites are racing to keep up and here's one worth looking at. [Read More...]

'Dual Target' CentricStor V4 tackles enterprise storage headaches head-on

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:00:00 +0100

Version 4 of FSC's CentricStor virtual tape appliance adds 'dual target' for backing up only to disk for fast retrieval as well as to tape, while other features directly address vendor needs [Read More...]

Thin, mean and green - a quick way to save corporate IT cash while cutting CO2

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0100

Remember thin clients? Now a series of factors have come together to boost their usage while also hastening the demise of the corporate desktop PC - and about time too. [Read More...]

Overland and Diligent target SMEs with de-dupe VTL appliance

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:00:00 +0100

The Overland REO 9500D VTL appliance, with built-in de-duplication from Diligent, to attract SMEs with scalability, storage-savings and high performance [Read More...]

BakBone NetVault 8.0 overtaking competitors with heterogeneous CDP

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 06:00:00 +0100

NetVault integrates data protection with heterogeneous CDP launch [Read More...]

Why SolarWinds wins against the network management giants

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:00:00 +0100

SolarWinds has breezed quietly into 45,000 customers around the world for its network diagnostic and performance management tools; major competitors could learn some valuable lessons. [Read More...]

Adaptec Snap Server 700i Series provides iSCSI performance, scalability leap

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:00:00 +0100

Adaptec's Snap Server 700i Series launch today will further boost the iSCSI storage appliance mid-market while pushing Adaptec ahead of competitors [Read More...]

The case for converging governance, risk and compliance

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:00:00 +0100

The separate disciplines of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) policy-making are coming together in an emerging software sector; but how will business benefit? [Read More...]

Neverfail succeeds because Windows fails

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:00:00 +0100

For as long as Windows, server hardware or applications fail, there will be a demand for low-cost ways of nevertheless keeping up and running 24/7. Neverfail's approach is neat. [Read More...]

SteelEye expands into growing CDP market

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:00:00 +0100

SteelEye Data Replication software has added continuous data protection (CDP) plus a few attractive extras - reflecting a growing acceptance of CDP [Read More...]

StorLife CAS - compliance and de-duping another way

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 06:00:00 +0100

CAS is a clever technology that can save huge amounts of storage space, but is not appropriate everywhere. StorLife sees an opportunity in compliance archiving [Read More...]

Can unified governance deliver for the emerging GRC market

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:00:00 +0100

Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) is an emerging market, and some large consultancies see a big bucks potential. But is unified governance feasible? Peapod thinks so [Read More...]

IQ storage too good for SAN and NAS

Peter Williams, Bloor Research — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:00:00 +0100

Isilon's IQ series provides raw storage performance and capacity, but can only be achieved by not living inside SAN or NAS - showing there's sometimes another way [Read More...]