Bladewatch.com

I’m putting together a Whitepapers (and Redbook) page to link some relevant documents that the vendors have put together to aid in best practice, system configuration and end user empowerment. If you are interested, send me the URL, I’ll read it and then add it to the page.

Hosting the link/the content is free to vendors, the aim is to make the information more accessible to our readers and the readers walking by via google. Do get in touch – martin237@gmail.com.

The offer is open to vendors of Enterprise technology, we don’t discriminate based on size, mainly on the relevance to our readers.

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http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2011-11-28/violin_memory_sees_ten-fold_growth_in_emea.html

Nov. 28 — Violin Memory, provider of the world’s fastest and most scalable Memory Arrays, has just announced an 10x quarter on quarter growth in EMEA sales. Both revenues and on-site customer POCs (Proof Of Concept) have exploded into multi-million euro opportunities in the last two quarters. This growth has been matched by the investment and recruitment of its EMEA field sales operation. By year-end Violin will have 20 field sales employees & delivery capability in UK & Ireland, Austria, Germany, France, Nordics and Benelux, with additional resource, expected to reach 50 in 2012, to support the remaining EMEA territories. The company, with EMEA headquarters in Camberley, UK, has challenged the industry to dramatically increase application performance by 10x and simultaneously reduce their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by 90%. “We’ve physically demonstrated to customers how our new flash memory array based solutions can dramatically reduce data storage operating costs, whilst delivering levels of performance that until now have been wishful thinking. Every large enterprise is searching for a non-disruptive, high performance enterprise class solution to their application bottlenecks, consequently we’re flat out servicing that demand,” said Garry Veale, EMEA MD, at Violin Memory.

It’s great to see demand and interest in these high performance solutions, the more innovation and choice we see in this space, the more accessible we can make the offering, the platform if you will and extend new possibilities for solving real business problems or create opportunities for data analysis and revenue generation.

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http://hpcloud.com/

See what happens when the cloud meets one of the most recognized names in technology.

HP Cloud Services is building the next generation of cloud infrastructure, platform services and cloud solutions for developers, ISVs and businesses. We invite you to join our private beta.

Watching the demo, the process to build a server is as follows:

• Select cpu, memory and disk configuration from drop down
• Select operating system
• Select security template
• Press create

Do check it out, it’s very smart and illustrates the possibilities that could be easily deliverable to end user communities and small/medium businesses to empower extra capacity on demand. I love the Cloud Foundry concept.

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MarketView

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA–(Marketwire – Nov 15, 2011) – Violin Memory, Inc., provider of the world’s fastest and most scalable Memory Arrays, today named Scott Metzger vice president (VP) of corporate development. With more than two decades of industry and technical expertise, Metzger will aggressively lead Violin’s expansion into data intensive markets such as analytics, search and real-time decision management. Metzger is the latest in a string of high-profile additions to the Violin executive team including Garry Veale, HP’s former VP of EMEA’s StorageWorks Division, and Jonathan Goldick, former CTO of OnStor.

“We are seeing companies increase sophistication in managing data as an asset. Entirely new business models and businesses are being created by unlocking the power of the vast amount of data companies have at their disposal,” said Metzger. “Flash Memory Arrays are paving the road to a new era of real-time data and information services, and I will be actively pairing Violin’s unique technology with industry leading software vendors and developers to demonstrate the unrealized value of data assets.”

Prior to Violin, Metzger was the senior vice president (SVP) of products, engineering and operations for Apigee Corporation, where he led the effort to transform the company from service-oriented architectures (SOA) to application programming interface (API) management products and services. These now support the billions of devices that drive the app economy, including over 45 billion APIs calls per month. With Metzger’s guidance, Apigee more than quadrupled revenue growth in less than two years.

It’s great to see Scott being brought on board to assist with their expansion into new markets to illustrate their unique value proposition based on their memory array technology. I look forward to seeing their progress in this space and to see the innovations and recommendations for industry standard data and high performance intensive compute solutions. I’ve been hearing good things about their arrays from engineers and cio level users alike, so it will be interesting to see what’s in store for the near and long term future of their platform.

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http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1859415

Worldwide server shipments in the third quarter of 2011 grew 7.2 percent year-on-year, while revenue increased 5.2 percent year-on-year, according to Gartner, Inc.

“The third quarter of 2011 produced growth on a global level but there was some significant variation in growth by region,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. “All regions showed growth in both shipments and vendor revenue except for Western Europe which posted a 4.9 percent decline in revenue for the period. Asia/Pacific grew the most significantly in shipments with a 23.9 percent increase. Eastern Europe posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 27.4 percent for the period.”

“x86 servers forged ahead and grew 7.6 percent in units and 9.3 percent in revenue. Some regions like Western Europe and the United States did not produce as much relative x86-based server growth because of comparatively stronger third quarter results in 2010. RISC/Itanium Worldwide Unix server shipments declined 6.8 percent, but vendor revenue increased 3.5 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline of 6.9 percent,” Mr Hewitt said.

Check out Gartner’s latest announcement with regards to server shipments, this can be an emotive subject dependent on brand allegiance, regardless what matters to you as a customer is end user experience combined with volume (real or perceived), everything else is just white noise. Most importantly may the innovation and product investment continue so that the vendors may continued adding value and facilitating business empowerment and revenue generation through a more agile infrastructure, delivering on time, on budget and to plans.

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MarketWatch

ROUND ROCK, Texas, Nov 29, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — –Solution combines Dell Services’ ERP implementation, integration expertise and hosting capabilities with core business intelligence to help manufacturers make efficient corporate decisions

–Companies could see improvement within the first year of solution implementation

–Dell Product & Profit Analytics solution strengthens Dell’s commitment to end-to-end, manufacturing solutions

Dell today introduced Dell Product & Profit Analytics (DPPA), an efficient IT solution that allows manufacturing companies to predict the impact market conditions could have on their products by linking detailed material, manufacturing and selling costs from across all business systems. The solution combines Dell Services’ ERP implementation, integration expertise and hosting capabilities with core business intelligence to provide real-time simulations and predictive analytics. Dell and pVelocity, Dell’s DPPA partner, met with customers in the Detroit-area today to demonstrate the new solution.

“With this solution, manufacturers have the ability to make effective and efficient corporate decisions based on real-time, predictive data,” said Michael J. Morrison, executive director, Dell Services – Manufacturing. “Whether it’s empowering decision-makers with insight and control, providing the ability to answer critical business questions from all areas of the company or enabling companies to identify, with confidence, what contributes most to overall margin performance, Dell Product & Profit Analytics can help manufacturers save a significant amount of time and money, all in a seamless package.”

Anything Dell can do to adjust their offerings and solutions to meet the customer need whether it’s in manufacturing, education or healthcare has to be a good thing in terms of end user choice and competition in the industry, I’m off to read more about the announcement.

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MarketWatch

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, Nov 30, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Symantec Corp. today announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has selected the Clearwell eDiscovery Platform to streamline eDiscovery investigations. Clearwell enables FBI case agents to efficiently manage and analyze documents including the ability to search, review, tag and export documents for exchange. As a result, the agency is able to reduce the time and resources required for document review and thus benefit from a significant reduction in the costs of investigations.

Clearwell presents a solution to reduce administrative workload on agents, save money, and increase the efficiency of case investigations. Clearwell’s strengths include advanced search and analytics capabilities and the ability to automatically eliminate duplicate information, which can contribute to a significant reduction in total investigation costs. In addition, Clearwell provides the ability to review, tag and export documents to partner agencies and prosecuting attorneys, which can assist case agents in all aspects of trial.

It’s always interesting to see what different organizations are using to solve their business or operational challenges, in this case it’s the FBI selecting Clearwell eDiscovery Platformto aid in their investigations, very cool, I’m off to read more.

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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/veeam-brings-its-data-protection-to-windows-server-hyper-v-2011-11-30

News Facts:

– Veeam Software, innovative provider of data protection, disaster recovery and management solutions for virtual datacenter environments, now offers Windows Server Hyper-V protection as well as Microsoft Hyper-V Server protection with Veeam Backup & Replication v6. The new version offers a single solution for fast, efficient, reliable, and affordable data protection of multi-hypervisor environments encompassing Windows Server Hyper-V and VMware vSphere. With Veeam, customers can now protect all virtual machines with a single product, from a single console, minimizing cost and complexity. Find out more about other enhancements in v6 in today’s related announcement- http://vee.am/v6vmware .

– Veeam Backup & Replication support for Windows Server Hyper-V brings unprecedented speed and efficiency to Windows Server Hyper-V data protection. Major first-to-market capabilities include: — 2-in-1: backup and replication: Provides image-based backup and near-continuous data protection (near-CDP) in a single solution.

– Built-in deduplication and compression: Included at no extra charge, these capabilities minimize consumption of network bandwidth and backup storage.

– Changed block tracking for Windows Server Hyper-V: Exclusive Veeam technology enables fast, frequent and efficient backup and replication of all VMs, including those running on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV).

– Additional differentiators for Windows Server Hyper-V include: — Agentless: There are no agents to license, deploy, maintain, or monitor.

– Forever incremental: Eliminates the need for full periodic backups by creating new full backups from incremental backups. This is essential when backing up large VMs or over a WAN.

– Instant file-level recovery: Restore Windows guest files directly from an image-level backup.

Extending the veeam offering to the Microsoft Hyper-V platforms brings further opportunities and end user choice in the virtualization space which has to be a good thing. Anything the vendors can do to improve functionality or scalability is a welcome addition to virtualization as a platform and for onboarding new users to the platform. If you’re at HP Discover in Vienna, do pop by booth 9 where the team can go through this announcement with you.

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Backstage coverage of the event lives here, you can also follow hash tag HPDiscover on Twitter.

I flew into Vienna to attend HP’s Discover 2011 conference which covered the extensive portfolio of HP products and services. I was looking forward to their announcements to see what they were working on and to ensure that the innovation and momentum continued. The highlights for me were:

• HP announcement about their B6200 StoreOnce backup system which brings impressive statistics and performance metrics, for capacity and backup/restore throughput – specs live here – http://h18000.www1.hp.com/storage/pdfs/4AA3-7775ENW.pdf
• HP announcement about their HP X5000 G2 Network Attached Storage System, which aims to aid midsize companies which already have a degree of experience with Microsoft Windows, to build upon it through an offering based on Microsoft Windows Storage Server. The specifications for it, live here – http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14154_div/14154_div.pdf
• Hearing the keynote from Meg Whitman which was informative about her background, her vision for HP and the underlying HP strategy which has since been re-enforced by other speakers and divisions where the focus is on stabilising the core, and innovating to deliver end user accessibility, functionality and pricing.

I then spent the afternoon walking around seeing what the different HP and non-HP booths had on display without disappointment, notable ones that I spoke with were fusion-io, VMware, Symantec, Violin Memory, veeam as well as the various HP ones including their data center which is very cool.

Pictures of the event have been posted on twitter but are also on our flickr page – http://www.flickr.com/photos/24561473@N00/sets/72157628217134307/

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http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/symantec-survey-finds-rapid-adoption-encryption-enterprises-coupled-with-growing-pains-nasdaq-symc-1592754.htm

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA–(Marketwire – Nov 30, 2011) – Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today released the findings of its 2011 Enterprise Encryption Trends Survey, which found enterprises are securing data with encryption in more places than ever. However, the survey discovered that encryption solutions are fragmented, creating risk for organizations from the lack of centralized control of access to sensitive information and disrupting critical processes such as e-discovery and compliance monitoring. In fact, the inability to access important business information due to fragmented encryption solutions and poor key management is costing each organization an average of $124,965 per year.

Do check out the survey, it’s always interesting to read these things and see what analysis, feedback has been identified. To be able to see if some of the best practices or failures identified could be prevented or limited in your organization.

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