Network World

Data Center Breaking News

Users note virtualization foot-dragging among app vendors

Although they have moved to virtualize servers, some IT managers have found there are applications, particularly specialized ones for healthcare, retailing and other industries, where vendors are wary of software support in virtualized environments.
IBM bundles x86 servers with VMware, offers special financing

IBM is bundling its x86 servers with VMware's newest virtualization platform, and offering financing packages to lower upfront costs.
IBM supercomputer to heat university buildings

Excess waste heat from a supercomputer being constructed by IBM will be used to warm nearby university buildings in Switzerland.
Reflex Systems’ virtual triple threat

Reflex Systems evolves its security products into tools for the virtual realm, and the vendor again updates the technology to incorporate policy-based management and compliance-related capabilities.
Dell diversifies with fixed server offerings

Dell on Wednesday said it would offer pre-configured systems for enterprise customers looking to get server environments up and running quickly.
68-degree data centers becoming a thing of the past, APC says

Cooling a data center to 68 degrees may be going out of style, APC power and cooling expert Jim Simonelli says.
Vendors pitch stripped-down servers to giant Web properties

The explosion of giant Web properties has server vendors building a new kind of machine that is stripped down to the bare essentials and optimized for cost- and energy-efficiency, analysts say.
Verizon Business launches cloud service

Verizon Business is the latest company to hop on to the cloud bandwagon. The company has introduced its own on-demand offering, Computing as a Service (CaaS), claiming that the product would meet a wide range of business demands.
Cisco adds rack server to data center computing system

Cisco this week extended its Unified Computing System data center convergence platform with rack mountable servers, saying the new form factor represents an "entry level" into UCS and more choice for customers.
Data center network brawl

Cisco has the much-touted Unified Computing System. How do the other big vendors stack up in the battle for the converged data center?
Tibco offers elastic cloud for developers

Tibco is set to offer a product for companies looking to move to a cloud computing model. The company will launch Silver, a new application delivery platform that Tibco claimed will meet the concerns that the enterprises have about the cloud. Silver will be introduced in beta on 30 June and made generally available early next year.
Server sales dropping faster than in dot-com crash: Gartner

Intel and AMD are spicing up the server market with ever-faster processors, but server vendors have suffered the largest revenue decline seen this decade, Gartner has found.
Dell building up its cash reserves for acquisition

Dell plans to grow its business by acquiring another company, a senior executive said Friday.
Outlook gloomy for most IT sectors

There's little light at the end of the tunnel for the IT industry. Spending across IT sectors is set to remain low throughout 2009 and is not expected to pick up until 2010. And more companies have been cutting their spending rather than increasing it, even in areas such as storage, where demand was increasing.
Virtualization cost savings hard to come by, Interop survey finds

Network Instruments polls Interop Las Vegas 2009 attendees to learn more about how server virtualization impacts their environment.
Rackable becomes SGI

When storage and server vendor Rackable acquired SGI recently, no one expected the company would take the name of a flagging vendor. But that is exactly what happened – Rackable became Silicon Graphics International this week.
Microsoft outlines five ways Exchange 2010 wil be faster, more scalable

Microsoft said Monday that its upcoming Exchange Server 2010 software will be able to read and write e-mails to disk 70% faster than Exchange 2007, despite the fact it uses the current same engine.
Data center 10G whets switching companies' appetites

Announcements from four vendors this week highlight a growing trend in data center networking: the rapid uptake of 10 Gigabit Ethernet to accommodate increasing computational and storage density brought on by application growth, increasing use of blade servers and large-scale virtualization.
As economy softens, Microsoft ramps up research

Even as the world economy languishes, Microsoft is putting an increasing focus on its research efforts in areas well beyond its traditional desktop and office software domain.
AppZero debuts server applications virtualization on Windows

AppZero Wednesday released a Windows version of its server application virtualization tools, handily beating Microsoft out the door with a technology designed to help users more easily move server applications between internal and cloud platforms.
China's chips to power blade servers this year

Blade servers based on microprocessors designed in China will power a supercomputer prototype to be revealed by a government-backed Chinese firm in September, the company said Tuesday.
Intel releases power management tool for data centers

Intel on Thursday announced Data Center Manager software tool kit that can reduce the power drawn by servers in data centers by tapping into hardware resources.
Microsoft runs cannibalization risk with low-end server push

Microsoft runs the risk of cannibalizing some server sales with the release of Windows Server 2008 Foundation Edition, a low-end version of the server operating system that will ship installed on servers that cost as little as $500. But the potential boost of expanding the market for low-end servers outweighs the risk of losing some sales of more expensive versions of the operating system, a Microsoft executive said Wednesday.
Top EMC storage exec jumps ship for HP

Top EMC storage executive David Donatelli has abruptly left the company to join rival HP as executive vice president for enterprise servers, storage and networking, HP announced yesterday.
The impact of VDI

The last couple of newsletters looked at some of the challenges associated with implementing virtualized servers. This newsletter will examine some of the challenges associated with implementing a virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI).